Boxoffice > The Business of Movies

Defamation

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:35:12 -0800

Anti-Semitism is pretty uncontroversial: it’s always bad. What Yoav Shamir’s documentary, Defamation, uncovers is the right and left wing political perspectives in the Jewish International community that have helped the term change meaning: Anti-Zionism is the new Anti-Semitism. Problem is, the new term is singly political but it still carries all the old racist baggage—clearly this is problematic. Shamir acts as our navigator through the subject and thereby softens the hard edges and proves the film is as much a political act as a personal exploration. Interviews with academics, politicians and Rabbis fill in the gaps in information with authority and varied perspective. Theatrical numbers for Defamation should be better than your run of the mill doc though the Hollywood community that might be responsible for the film’s publicity (or lack thereof) are precisely the community that might find this material either contentious or bothersome.

An Israeli in his mid-thirties, Shamir says directly that he’s never experienced Anti-Semitism, and when he says that he’s referring to the variety of prejudice that inspired the Holocaust. The Holocaust (reasonably) hangs heavy over all the film’s dialogues, even in less than overt ways. A group of high school students planning a major field trip to the Concentration Camps in Poland are emotionally prepared by a counselor who tells them they will meet people who don’t like them because they’re Jewish. When a girl in the group awkwardly says “hello” to a Pole at an historic site, he says something quirky to her and she construes it as a racist slur. A Rabbi in a later scene will explain, “Part of being Jewish is not fighting Anti-Semitism. Part of being Jewish is practicing Judaism.” Hereby drawing a line between the religion of Judaism and its attendant culture.

Shamir’s first stop in the states is the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), prestigiously headed by Abraham Foxman. A stately and patrician man, Foxman offers Shamir full access to follow him around, enter meetings and tail him on the most holiday-like business trip to the Concentration Camps imaginable. Standing next to the largest unmarked gravesite known from the Holocaust, we don’t see the diplomats practice a moment of silence. Instead, Shamir lets us in on their conversation—about Israel. As the diplomats say, “It could happen again,” famously reviled academic Norman Finkelstein, says the media is a flurry daily over the multiple instances of genocide taking place abroad. But the diplomats’ discussion leads them to the declaration that “Israel is our insurance policy.” Therefore, what threatens their insurance policy threatens them as a people.

That Shamir is Israeli gives him a platform for his inquiry but it’s not a free pass. The consideration he offers his subjects and their points of view suggests humility, and his charm certainly pulls you though the trenches. His subject is layered, but what stands out is how he manages language, as much of the arguments had in the film and about the subject are boardroom battles revolving around well chosen words. Ultimately, the film has a quirk and a gentility to it that makes an otherwise difficult or volatile subject seem too personal to disregard and too important to downplay.

Distributor: First Run Features
Director/Screenwriter: Yoav Shamir
Producers: Sandra Itkoff, Karoline Leth and Knut Ogris
Genre: Documentary; Hebrew, Russian and Polish-languages, subtitled
Rating: Unrated
Running time: 91 min.
Release date: November 20 ltd.

Planet 51

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:25:19 -0800

Planet 51 is one of those movies with no real, natural audience, a family comedy that is not really for kids with humor too mild to appeal to many adults. A gentle riff on the alien invasion movies of the ’50s, it is an amiable trifle about a U.S. astronaut who lands on what he thinks is an uninhabited planet in a far-off galaxy. The astronaut ultimately finds himself in the unaccustomed role of ‘feared alien’ on a planet full of green people who seem to exist in an alternative 1950s universe. A sharper satire might have pulled in Sci-fi buffs, but instead this is strictly for the family crowd, and in a year that has been jam-packed with animated features (many funnier than this one). Blockbuster numbers seem unlikely, but with few child-friendly alternatives in theaters, box office returns should be healthy.

Soon after Captain Charles T. Baker (Dwayne Johnson) lands on the titular planet, he finds himself a hunted man in a world certain he’s out to enslave it. Only 16 year old science geek Lem (Justin Long) and his friends, comic book fan/conspiracy buff Skiff (Seann William Scott) and 7 year old Sci-fi fan Eckle (Freddie Benedict), know the truth. Far from being an evil invader, the spaceman is friendly, a bit vain, somewhat thick and desperate to return to his mother ship before it begins its return voyage to earth without him. He also proves to be a fount of romantic wisdom for Lem, as the teenager agonizes over the best way to win the heart of girl next door, Neera (Jessica Biel).

The movie opens with an alien invasion movie parody, a kind of parody of the parody. Screenwriter Joe Stillman (Shrek, Shrek 2, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America) has obvious affection for those old movies and his creation of the bizarre ’50s world touches on other affectionate throwback films like Back to the Future and Pleasantville. But the humor is bland and so are the characters. Despite the best efforts of vocal talents like Johnson, Long and Scott, neither the earthling nor the Planet 51-ites evince much personality. The only character that does is Johnson's rolling space probe, a rover called Rover who has all of the characteristics of a canine companion.

Planet 51 does stand out in one area and that is in design. Fans of Googie architecture of the 1950s and ’60s will appreciate the way the movie pays homage to it in the planet's buildings, which are at once retro and futuristic. The cars, which are rounded sort of hovercrafts on wheels, are similarly inspired. The design, in fact, is the wittiest element of the movie. If as much care had gone into the story and the characters, Planet 51 might have been enchanting. Instead, for a tale that takes place in a galaxy far, far away, it remains resolutely earthbound.

Distributor: Sony
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Justin Long, Jessica Biel, Seann William Scott, Gary Oldman and John Cleese
Director: Jorge Blanco
Screenwriter: Joe Stillman
Producers: Guy Collins and Ignacio Pérez Dolset
Genre: Family/Animation
Rating: PG for mild sci-fi action and some suggestive humor.
Running time: 91 min.
Release Date: November 20, 2009

UPDATED: Weekend Predictions

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:58:16 -0800

Friday Afternoon Update (12:47 p.m. PT): Based on New Moon's impressive $26.27 million haul from midnight screenings, it's entirely possible that the Summit release could end up with as much as $115-$120 million during its debut frame if all goes well.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen currently boasts the strongest opening weekend tally of 2009 with $109 million.

Thursday Afternoon Update (3:23 p.m. PT): Early reports from abroad show that New Moon is already raking in impressive numbers. The vampire flick is faring the best in France, where it has tallied a solid $4.4 million.

Reviews of the film haven't exactly been glowing. New Moon currently has a 28 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. While the critical backlash certainly won't stop die-hard fans from going to theaters, it may cause moviegoers who are new to the series to think twice.

Check out our final weekend predictions in the table below.

	Weekend Predictions: November 20 to November 22, 2009
	Title	Gross (M)	Cume (M)	Locations	Inc./Dec.
1	The Twilight Saga: New Moon	$110.0	$110.0	4,024	New
2	2012	$28.5	$111.2	3,408	+4
3	The Blind Side	$14.5	$14.5	3,110	New
4	Disney's A Christmas Carol	$13.7	$81.4	3,578	-105
5	Planet 51	$12.8	$12.8	3,035	New
6	Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire	$10.3	$20.8	629	+455
7	The Men Who Stare at Goats	$2.7	$27.7	2,065	-397
8	Michael Jackson's This Is It	$2.4	$71.0	1,640	-1,397
9	Law Abiding Citizen	$2.3	$70.8	1,327	-744
10	Couples Retreat	$2.0	$105.1	1,712	-797

Wednesday Afternoon Update (5:13 p.m. PT): Fresh on the heels of 2012's massive success, The Twilight Saga: New Moon will invade multiplexes this weekend. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. will release The Blind Side and Sony is sending out Planet 51.

The first Twilight film grossed nearly $384 million worldwide, and $191.4 million of that came from domestic grosses. Since then, millions of new "Twihards" have been born thanks to the availability of the DVD and the popularity of Stephenie Meyer's source novels. As a result, it is highly likely that New Moon will improve upon Twilight's considerable haul.

Fans of the franchise are obviously anticipating packed theaters and they are doing what they can in order to avoid being turned away. New Moon is now officially the #1 advance seller of all time on both Fandango.com and MovieTickets.com. Thousands of midnight shows are already old sold out between the two ticketing sites.

“The Twilight fan base has clearly expanded since the release of the first film,” says Fandango spokesman Harry Medved. “Our ticket-buyer surveys show that a majority of fans buying tickets to New Moon got into the saga after the first film—so we’re not just talking about a cadre of book-buyers here. We’re also seeing that the movie has a wide-ranging national appeal—it’s not just a big city phenomenon—as there are sold-out showtimes in cities like Kenai, Alaska and Zanesville, Ohio."

New Moon is showing higher levels of activity than any other 2009 release on Flixster, an online movie community with 20 million unique users a month. The vampire flick is tracking 14.8 percent ahead of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and 8.8 percent ahead of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

“Of course, females are the primary audience. What’s interesting to note is that under-25 females are more than twice as likely to want to see the movie as older females—who, in turn, are nearly three times as likely as men to be showing interest," says John Singh, a spokesperson for Flixster, when discussing the kind of interaction that is taking place on the popular Web site.

New Moon could end up with a debut haul of as much as $110 million from more than 4,000 locations this weekend. The current record holder for the best November opening weekend is 2005's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with nearly $102.7 million, which equates to around $115 million when adjusted for inflation. In addition, a particularly strong performance could help 2009's total domestic gross reach the $9 billion mark as early as Friday night. To put that into perspective, 2008 didn't reach that plateau until December 13 and 2007 hit it on December 18.

Elsewhere in theaters, The Blind Side will represent a perfect alternative for adult moviegoers who are tired of listening to their teenage children going crazy about New Moon. Star Sandra Bullock is having a strong year. The Proposal grossed $164 million domestically, and even All About Steve managed $33.8 million despite scathing reviews and little marketing support.

Blind Side is responsible for two percent of sales as of 4 p.m. PT on Fandango, a strong number considering its competition.

Expect Blind Side to grab around $15 million during its opening frame from around 3,100 locations.

Planet 51 will have to find a sweet spot among family audiences who don't want to take their young children to see New Moon. The animated flick will face direct competition from Disney's A Christmas Carol, which is still doing well and will continue to do so right up until Christmas.

Planet 51 could manage to rake in around $13 million this weekend from around 2,600 locations.

2012 should be able to maintain a solid amount of its opening weekend audience. The disaster flick will still have a strong appeal among male moviegoers who aren't the least bit interested in a love triangle built around a human, a vampire and a werewolf. Expect the Sony release to finish with around $27.5 million during its sophomore frame.

Check back tomorrow for our full Top 10 predictions as well as official location counts.

Additional reporting by Daniel Garris and Alex Edghill

‘2012’ #1 on Eve of ‘New Moon’

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:51:17 -0800

Sony’s 2012 topped Thursday’s daily box office with $3.17 million. That was down 13 percent from Wednesday and brings the film’s one-week total to $81.72 million. That represented a very solid start for the extremely expensive disaster film, especially when considering that 2012 is performing much stronger internationally. The seven-day domestic start for 2012 was nearly on par with the seven-day start of Sony’s Quantum of Solace last November, as 2012 currently trails the pace of the last James Bond film by just 0.4 percent.

In anticipation of The Twilight Saga: New Moon, Summit re-issued Twilight on Thursday night in 2,057 locations for one showing only. The Twilight re-issue grossed an excellent $1.30 million, which was good enough for second place on Thursday and brings the film’s lifetime total to $192.77 million. Afterwards, the main event was released to record-breaking numbers, as The Twilight Saga: New Moon grossed an estimated $26.27 million from its midnight screenings. That number topped the previous $22.2 million midnight record of this year’s Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince and will be counted towards Friday’s box office. New Moon needs to gross $40.90 million during the rest of Friday to match the all-time opening day record of The Dark Knight.

Disney’s A Christmas Carol fell one spot to third with $1.04 million. However, the 3D holiday film experienced the day’s best hold among wide releases, as it was down only 2 percent from Wednesday and down 32 percent from last Thursday. Yesterday’s hold strongly suggests that A Christmas Carol will be the least affected of any wide release by New Moon this weekend, though it could still take a hit from the combined debuts of Warner’s The Blind Side and Sony’s Planet 51 as well. A Christmas Carol grossed $26.60 million for the week, which brings the film’s two-week total to $67.56 million.

Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire fell one spot from Wednesday to place in fifth. Though it was down 11 percent from Wednesday, Lionsgate’s Oscar hopeful for Best Picture continues to post impressive per-location numbers. Precious grossed $7.57 million for the week, which made it the week’s fourth highest grossing film, despite playing in only 174 locations. Precious has grossed $10.40 million in 14 days and will be playing in 629 locations this weekend.

Check back throughout the weekend for additional coverage of The Twilight Saga: New Moon.

IFC Entertainment Signs Deal to Make Independent Films Films Available to be Watched Instantly at Netflix

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:55:56 -0800

NEW YORK – In a move designed to increase the reach of independent cinema, IFC Entertainment, one of the leading distributors of independent and foreign films, and Netflix, the world’s largest online movie rental service, today announced a partnership that gives Netflix U.S. rights to 53 unique titles from IFC Entertainment. Through this agreement select titles from IFC Entertainment’s eclectic library of independent films will become available to be streamed instantly to televisions and computers via the Netflix service. The deal was announced jointly by Lisa Schwartz, executive vice president for IFC Entertainment, and Robert Kyncl, vice president of content acquisition for Netflix.

The partnership gives Netflix members on an unlimited plan the opportunity to instantly watch the newly acquired films on their computers or TVs through a range of Netflix ready devices. Those devices include Netflix ready Blu-ray disc players and new Internet TVs from LG Electronics; Blu-ray disc players from Samsung and Best Buy’s Insignia brand; the Roku digital video player; Microsoft's Xbox 360 game console and Sony’s Playstation 3 (PS3) computer entertainment system; TiVo digital video recorders, and Internet TVs from Sony and, soon, VIZIO. The films will be available beginning Friday, November 20th.

"Netflix has always championed independent cinema and has creatively built audiences for films in this genre, and we’re excited to give their customers instant access to this wide-ranging collection of independent film,” said Lisa Schwartz, executive vice president for IFC Entertainment. “Our top priority is to make independent film available to a wider audience and this partnership further underscores that commitment."

“Partnering with IFC Films gives us the opportunity to expand the number of quality films that our subscribers can watch instantly,” said Robert Kyncl, vice president of content acquisition for Netflix. “This deal reinforces our commitment to bringing diversity to the library and properties like this collection of titles bring us closer to that goal.”

The deal will include 53 contemporary classic, and recent critically acclaimed titles, including English-language independents from John Sayles’ Sundance prize winner THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET and the award-winning RETURN OF SECAUCUS SEVEN, Christopher Nolan’s first film FOLLOWING, Joe Swanberg’s NIGHTS AND WEEKENDS, James Toback's WHEN WILL I BE LOVED?, and Rebecca Miller's debut ANGELA.

The library will also feature documentaries by renowned filmmaker Errol Morris, including the groundbreaking THE THIN BLUE LINE and his debut feature GATES OF HEAVEN. Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's award-winning BROTHER'S KEEPER, and Jim Stern and Adam Del Deo's political documentary SO GOES THE NATION are also featured.

In addition, some of the most celebrated foreign language titles of recent years can be instantly streamed from Netflix, including Susanne Bier's BROTHERS, Patrice Chereau's GABRIELLE, Hirokazu Kore-Eda's Cannes prize winner NOBODY KNOWS, Lukas Moodysson's TOGETHER, Christophe Honoré’s DANS PARIS, Catherine Breillat SEX IS COMEDY, Alfonso Cuaron SOLO CON TU PAREJA, Kristian Levring THE INTENDED and Hou Hsiao Hsien’s THREE TIMES.

UPDATED: 'New Moon' at Midnight

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:58:16 -0800

UPDATE: With $26,270,000 from midnight shows, New Moon shattered the midnight screening record of $22.2 million set by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince this past summer. The vampire flick is set to sell more than 10 tickets per second today on Fandango.com, where it currently accounts for a whopping 85 percent of sales.

America's obsession with New Moon is reaching a fever pitch. Thousands of midnight shows across the country were sold out, and that's not just in the major cities. If early reports are any indication, the Summit release may have set a new midnight record by topping Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince's haul of $22.2 million. We were able to get some reactions from some smaller locations where the Twilight craze is still very palpable.

"New Moon was an event last night at every theater where midnight shows were available. All theaters were sold out and the audiences loved it," says Jeff Kaufman, Senior VP Film and Film Marketing at Malco Theatres, a Southern chain with 31 locations. "The excitement also extended to our smaller markets like Oxford and Corinth [both in Mississippi] and Van Buren, AK where midnight sellouts are rare."

Some other reactions:

AMC Tallahassee Mall in Tallahassee, Florida, by J. Michael Osborne:

When I was sitting in the theater awaiting New Moon, one of seven long since sold-out screens reserved for the film at the AMC I attended, and among "Twihards" who had been waiting for eight hours (!) just to get a good seat, the anticipation was getting violent. It became like the end of Gremlins, when all of the gremlins are packed into a movie theater, laughing for no evident reason, throwing popcorn, having small inexplicable temper tantrums and screaming intermittently. Just substitute the gremlins for teenage girls, their vaguely uncomfortable boyfriends, some zealous moms in “Team Edward” t-shirts and, perhaps the oddest breed of all, the balding “TwiDads,” and you have the opening midnight screening of The The Twilight Saga: New Moon in Tallahassee, Florida.

“It’s just fun,” said Twilight fan Elizabeth Stein, who was 21, a few years older than the average Twihard attendee that night. “I mean, if you like the books enough then you get really excited about it; you don’t—you don’t want to wait. It’s fun to go see the first showing… [Although] I kind of wish I didn’t have to see it with a bunch of screaming children.”

From Cinema Center 3 in Newark, Delaware, by Katherine Guiney:

Cinema Center 3 became a sea of Uggs and leggings Thursday night, as tons of female fans turned out for a midnight showing of The Twilight Saga: New Moon. And though the movie did not begin until midnight, many, if not most, arrived to the theater an hour or more ahead of time to secure tickets and good seats.

Kelsy Evans and Christa Sullivan, who both arrived early with friends, could not hold back their excitement for the film.

“We’re 12-year-old groupies,” Evans said. “At least that’s what we feel like.”

Evans and Sullivan, both college students who’ve read all of the books in Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series, had high expectations for New Moon.

“Last year’s was disappointing … I’m banking on this one being better,” Sullivan said, citing the addition of Dakota Fanning and Michael Sheen as obvious improvements.

Like Evans and Sullivan, die-hard Twilight fan Amy Costelloe arrived with high hopes for the Chris Weitz film.

“The previews looked really good,” Costelloe said, “I’ll be pissed if it’s not.”

Costelloe, who did not get to see Twilight on opening day last year, said she could not miss the opportunity to be at the Cinema Center, an independent theater, on opening night this time around.

“I came because I love it so much, I just had to,” she said. “I love Edward.”

Costelloe did not have to wait long to see Robert Pattinson in action, as he graced the screen even before the film began in a preview for Remember Me, garnering premature woos and ahhs.

Although the Cinema’s midnight showing of New Moon, which played on the largest of the Center’s three screens, did not sell out like it did at most Delaware area theaters, it did not disappoint fans in the end.

The excitement palpable before the film began was just as present when it was over. Moviegoers left describing the New Moon as “good” and “amazing,” some planning on when they can go catch the movie again.

Thurman Joins 'Bel Ami' Cast

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:07:33 -0800

Source: THR

Uma Thurman will star opposite Robert Pattinson and Kristin Scott Thomas in Bel Ami, a project about a journalist who becomes one of the most successful men in Paris after sleeping with powerful women.

Thurman is in need of a box office hit, and the presence of Pattinson could certainly help achieve that. The actress most recently appeared in Motherhood, which has grossed a paltry $93,279 since opening in October. Three of Thurman's biggest theatrical triumphs have come as a result of her involvement with Quentin Tarantino on Pulp Fiction and the two Kill Bill films.

Weekend Cinema Listomania (Special In the Not Too Distant Future Edition)

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:13:55 -0800

Video Event of the Week: Could VCI Entertainment's DVD of Douglas Sirk's low budget Chekhov adaptation Summer Storm (1944), starring George Sanders, get the nod? Might Microcinema's disc of Luis Bunuel's 1956 Death in the Garden, an overlooked thriller from his Mexican period, conceivably deserve the honor? Or despite the horror that was the recent cable remake, could A&E Home Video's remastered box set of the complete original The Prisoner tv series, with the great Patrick McGoohan, possibly be The One?

All worthy, to be sure, and if I can shnorr a copy of the Sirk, I'm going to have something to say about it down the line, but for my money it's got to be Shout! Factory's four-disc limited edition box set Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XVI.

You know the set-up, of course: A guy -- either Joel Hodgson or Michael J. Nelson -- is trapped on a spaceship with a couple of robots (Crow, Tom Servo and the preternaturally wise Gypsy) and forced by mad scientists to watch really bad movies, which he and they survive by cracking wise at them. It's a brilliant concept in its since often-imitated post-modern way, and over the course of the show's ten year run, it resulted in some of the funniest stuff ever seen on the small screen.

The films being parodied in the new set? The Bela Lugosi cheapie The Corpse Vanishes (a Joel episode from the first cable season, and as interesting as you'd imagine -- kind of like baby pictures), the Mexican jawdropper Santa Claus, early Roger Corman-derived turkey Night of the Blood Beast (in both its Thanksgiving Special version and straight, if that's the right word) and of course, the always amazing sub-Mad Max futuristic motorcycle saga Warrior of the Lost World, the first episode from the first complete Mike season. I'm hard pressed to say which is the most hilarious, but let's stipulate up front that after you've seen what the Satellite of Love crew does to Santa Claus, your ideas about god, man and the nature of reality will never be the same.

Here's a clip from the set -- the opening of WOTLD -- just to whet your apetite, as it were.

"It's not so much the apocalypse...it's the humidity." God, I'd forgotten how much I love these guys.

The films aside, the set comes with a plethora of fun bonuses, beginning with a nice little plastic figurine of Tom Servo and including various theatrical trailers and a hilarious documentary on Mexican horror and sci-films, Santa Claus Conquers the Devil: A 50 Year Retrospective. Best of the bunch by far, however, is a new interview with WOTLW director David Worth, who tells a bunch of great stories about the genesis of the film and who turns out to be a thoroughly charming and self-effacing guy. Yes, it's a bad film, he cheerfully admits, but then again so are most of Renny Harlin's, and his crap costs a hundred times more. Truer words, etc.

In any case, you can -- and most obviously should -- pre-order MST3K: Volume XVI
over here.

Okay, with that out of the way, and since things are likely to be little quiet around here for a few days, here's a relevant and hopefully fun little project for us all:

The Awful But Somehow Respectable Film You Really, Really Wish Had Been Given the MST3K Treatment!!!

And my totally top of my head Top Five is:

5. Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman, 1962)

Hands down the most unintentionally hilarious art film of its decade; you would need a heart of stone not to laugh when fisherman Max Von Sydow won't boink his wife because he's depressed about the Red Chinese getting The Bomb. And the seemingly endless uninterrupted close-up of Ingrid Thulin talking about her psoriasis all but begs for mockery by two robots and a guy in space.

4. Over the Top (Menahem Golan, 1987)

Stallone. Competitive arm-wrestling. And as you can see, it would only be better in German.

3. Bugsy Malone (Alan Parker, 1976)

A period gangster movie with children playing all the parts, and easily as thrilling as that sounds. Plus: Songs by demented death dwarf Paul Williams. If ever a movie called for three silhouettes in front of it, this is it.

2. Interiors (Woody Allen, 1978)

A New York Jew's idea of high WASP angst, and about as convincing as David Brooks pretending to be Episcopalian, if you'll forgive a recycled joke. C'mon -- wouldn't you love to see this one played for laughs, finally?

And the numero uno film or flick that really deserves to be taken down several pegs by a cowtown puppet show obviously is ---

1. Life is Beautiful (Roberto Benigni, 1997)

Six million had to die so this schmuck can tell his kid la vita è bella? F**k him and il cavallo he road in on. Seriously -- I've wanted to throw the metaphorical equivalent of several custard pies at this piece of crap for years, but I'd happily settle for Mike, Crow and Tom standing in for me in the theater.

Alrighty then -- what would your choices be?

Twitter Box Office Update

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:37:20 -0800

Total tweets for November 20th Openers

The Twilight Saga: New Moon just blew me away today by picking up 142,786 tweets, a 97.13% hike from Wednesday's "paltry" 72,431. That's just staggering. By 8PM EST it was raking in close to 1,000 tweets every 5 minutes. It occupied two of the biggest trending topics of Twitter which was no surprised and simply dwarfed everything again, and not just movies but all news. As an interesting yardstick, it was announced that Oprah would be canceling her show in September 2011, and when that news broke it was still generating less than half the tweet traffic of Twilight and then subsided. From 8PM EST to 12AM EST New Moon managed a staggering 70,000 tweets. There is simply no comparison for this film and might not be again until part trois picks up where this left off new summer. As for predictions, based on the rampant tweets and passion i'm going to raise my expected ratio to 6,000 which will give it a $62.5 million opening day (including midnights) and a ~$110 million weekend.

Planet 51 had a decent Thursday bump to 616 tweets, up 78.03% from Wednesday's 363 tweets. That puts it at 1,491 tweets for the week, which makes it the lowest tweet total of any film since i've been formally tracking Twitter since September. Not a huge surprise considering its target market of young kids. Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs managed to pull in 2,282 tweets in its opening week and got a 282 ratio from an $8.1 million Friday. I think the ratio here is going to be slightly higher with about 400, which should give it around a $3.75 million weekend and $12.8 million for the weekend.

Lastly comes Sandra Bullock's The Blind Side which secured 1,116 tweets on Thursday for a 13.88% increase from Wednesday's 980. It secured 3,544 tweets for the Monday to Thursday period. Best comparison I have since September would be Love Happens which managed 1,822 tweets for a 592 ratio and this should appeal to a similar audience. My estimate of a 650 final ratio should give it around $5.45 million on Friday and $14.5 million for the weekend.

Check back tomorrow to see how the midnight screenings went and what that might mean for its weekend potential.

Twitter tracking history.

The ratio is the number of tweets per $1 million of Friday Box Office gross. A film with 1,000 tweets and a $10 million Friday would therefore have a ratio of 100. In general, films that appeal to very young or older audiences have lower ratios since those audiences are not big users of Twitter. By comparison, films that appeal to younger audiences (18-35) have much higher ratios since those audiences are much more active users of Twitter.

‘2012’ Leads Wednesday Box Office

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:50:13 -0800

Sony’s 2012 remained at the top of the box office on Wednesday with $3.64 million. However, 2012 was down a sharp 20 percent from Tuesday, which marked the day’s biggest daily slide among wide releases. 2012 held up relatively well from Saturday through Monday, but has shown some signs of slowing each of the past two days. Nonetheless, the big-budget disaster film from director Roland Emmerich has exceeded domestic expectations so far with a six-day start of $78.55 million and is performing much stronger internationally. As will be the case with nearly all films this weekend, 2012 should take a big hit from the debut of Summit’s The Twilight Saga: New Moon on Friday, but has a good chance of stabilizing over the five-day holiday frame next week.

Disney’s A Christmas Carol remained in second place with $1.06 million. The 3D holiday film starring Jim Carrey was down 8 percent from Tuesday, which marked one of the day’s better daily holds among wide releases. A Christmas Carol was down a whopping 80 percent from last Wednesday’s Veterans Day holiday performance, but Wednesday to Wednesday declines were very sharp for nearly all films. A Christmas Carol has grossed $66.52 million in 13 days, placing it 26 percent ahead of the pace of 2004’s The Polar Express. The worldwide take for A Christmas Carol currently stands at nearly $100 million.

The Men Who Stare at Goats was down 14 percent from Tuesday, but remained in third with $0.45 million. Overture’s war comedy starring George Clooney was down 70 percent from last Wednesday. The 13-day gross for The Men Who Stare at Goats stands at $24.44 million. That is in line with pre-release expectations, but the film is holding up poorer than expected and should fade from theatres before much longer.

Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire held in fourth place with $0.40 million. Lionsgate’s Best Picture hopeful for Oscar was down 14 percent from Tuesday and up 23 percent from last Wednesday (when it was playing in 156 fewer locations). Precious crossed the $10 million mark yesterday on its 13th day of release, which is quite impressive given the limited number of locations the film has played in thus far. Precious will add an additional 455 locations on Friday.

Michael Jackson’s This Is It rounded out the day’s unchanged top five with $0.36 million. That was down 9 percent from Tuesday and down 82 percent from last Wednesday. Sony’s concert documentary has grossed $68.30 million in 22 days and should finish with just under $75 million when its domestic run ends at the end of Thanksgiving weekend.

BOXOFFICE.com's predictions for the weekend can be read here.

'jackass' Returning in Three Dimensions

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:07:49 -0800

Source: CHUD

After another four-year gap (identical to the one between 2002's jackass: the movie and 2006's jackass number two), Paramount seems prepared to bring Johnny Knoxville and crew's violent pranks to the big screen again with a third jackass movie, listed on their production schedule as jackass 3D.

While no further details are available other than the studio's listing the film on their production slate (including whether the film would be shot in stereoscopic 3D or shot on digital and converted to 3D during post production), members of the jackass team (including Knoxville and Bam Margera), have been suggesting that they would be making a return in 2010 in various interviews over the past year.

Both previous jackass films opened at number one in the US, grossing $64.2 and $72.7 million domestically. In the meantime, the group recently launched an all-new website, called www.jackassworld.com.

Connery Pipes Up For Animated 'Billi'

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:35:16 -0800

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Steven Spielberg may not have been able to lure acting legend Sir Sean Connery out of retirement for the latest Indiana Jones film, but the knighted actor has been convinced to lend his voice to an animated project he's been producing.

The film, titled Sir Billi, created by husband-and-wife Sascha and Tessa Hartmann, follows a retired, skateboarding veterinarian who lives in a remote Scottish village and who spearheads the rescue of a fugitive beaver. Alan Cumming and Miriam Margolyes also provide voices, and Shirley Bassey, who sung the title theme to Goldfinger back in 1964, has agreed to perform the song "Guardian of the Highlands" for use in the movie.

The original James Bond has been away from the silver screen for some time now, calling it quits after the tepid-to-disastrous critical and commercial reception of the 2003 comic book adaptation The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which only managed to earn $66.4 million domestically. Connery did, however, reprise his signature role in a video game adaptation of From Russia With Love in 2005.

Robert Downey, Jr. Thinks His Days Are Numbered

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:52:33 -0800

Source: Entertainment Weekly

Despite riding the wave of a massive career resurgence, Robert Downey, Jr. wonders if his days as a movie star are numbered. While promoting his upcoming tentpole release Sherlock Holmes, the two-time Oscar-nominee expressed doubts about his future. "I can only be a guy on a call sheet probably, I don’t know, maybe a couple more times. It’s something I’m so grateful to have in my palm, and yet I already see its inevitable decay.”

Much like New Moon director Chris Weitz, who also told the press that he was contemplating retirement, Downey expresses an interest in doing other things with his time such as painting and reading.

After a rocky patch marred by drug arrests, Downey Jr. climbed back into the public eye with Shane Black's popular action film Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and then shot all the way up to superstardom again in 2008's Iron Man, which grossed a surprise $318.2 million domestically. Downey has already finished shooting next year's highly-anticipated sequel with Mickey Rourke and Sam Rockwell, but he'll first be seen in Sherlock Holmes, which opens everywhere on Christmas Day.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:21:53 -0800

Talk to a Twilight fan (or Twihard or Twimom or Twitard, if you're nasty) and you'll hear concessions: Stephenie Meyer’s books are poorly written, Twilight is too melodramatically directed. Even Edward, they'll admit, is way emo and Bella sullen with entitlement. And that's from the devoted. New Moon isn't good enough to seduce new fans, but it's not bad enough to break off relentless infatuations. And though it'll make a mint, the big test is if fans will leave clamoring for the next two movies (the third of which is in production and the fourth plagued by concerns that it's unfilmable).

Enjoying all of New Moon's 130-minute running time (as I did, well enough) takes the ability to swoon and snort simultaneously—say, when a fantasy Bella runs through the woods in gray chiffon, or Edward recites the closing lines of Romeo and Juliet by heart. (He has been in high school for 80 years). We pick up at the start of Bella's (Kristen Stewart) senior year where she's devastated to turn the ripe old age of 18. Her vampire love (Robert Pattinson) stopped aging at 17 and Jacob (Taylor Lautner), the young Quileute Indian waiting for Edward to screw up with the irresistibly glum beauty, is just sweet 16. (And if you think Melissa Rosenberg's script is too weepy to make a cougar joke, you'd be wrong.)

When Edward breaks up with Bella and skips town, throwing in a few hurtful kicks so she won't follow, New Moon becomes a melodrama about a broken heart that gradually and sweetly mends. Edward and Jacob (or for fans, Team Edward and Team Jacob) represent the poles of immediate love with a stranger or patient love with a friend. As a sensible girl, I'd go Team Jacob, and not just because Jacob's wolf pack requires going topless. (If you're wondering how they keep their pants post-transformation, that's a secret for the book.) But Bella's again fallen for a reluctant killer—the werewolves' temper has already gotten one of their girlfriends maimed—which means even more shots of screaming and crying and running in the rain. But though Bella's dad (Billy Burke) advises her to “love who is good for you,” she still carries a torch for Edward—just the sight of his face sucks the air from her body. (Ironic, given he once crooned to her, “Bella, you give me everything just by breathing.”) They share the ultimate of teenager status symbols: a great love no one understands. In the ’50s that got sweethearts run over by trains. Here they battle carnivorous vampires. Same difference.

In interviews, you get the sense that everyone involved in the franchise from director Chris Weitz to his stars would rather being doing something else. That translates on the screen; in the way the camera awkwardly steps in and back during another declaration of love, the way that Pattinson clenches his jaw when Edward has to say something ridiculous, the way you can feel Stewart trying her darnedest not to bite her lips and stroke her hair (two tics teased by everyone from the blogosphere to Taylor Swift on SNL). The ultimate question is: if fans reluctantly love the books and reluctantly love the films, what's the source of their great love no one understands? It's part-Pattinson, but not wholly. After all, few bothered to catch Little Ashes, his catastrophic turn as Salvador Dali. The best I can figure is that fans are in love with themselves, with this fun and festive club they've formed, the goofy romance of Twilight mania (after all, post-Springsteen, mass culture has sorely lacked messiahs.) How bad does the movie have to be to make them stay away? Much worse than this. Carry on, sweet sisters, carry on.

Distributor: Summit Entertainment
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, Dakota Fanning, Michael Sheen, Bronson Pelletier, Kiowa Gordon and Jamie Campbell-Bower
Director: Chris Weitz
Writer: Melissa Rosenberg
Producers: Wyck Godfrey and Mark Morgan
Genre: Romance, Fantasy
Rating: PG-13 for some violence and action.
Running time: 130 min.
Release date: November 20, 2009

Make sure to check out our interviews with Taylor Lautner here and Chris Weitz here.

Good Riddance, Mike.

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:56:22 -0800

The fact that Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story didn't make the short list of potential Oscar nominees for Best Documentary sends a pretty clear message: Moore's shtick has grown old.

American moviegoers sent the same message when the film opened in September. Capitalism has grossed only $14.2 million domestically, which pales in comparison to the $119 million domestic haul of Fahrenheit 9/11.

The fact is that Moore lapsed into some serious self-parody in Capitalism. He used the same old shifty editing techniques and the same kind of overly-simplified, cloying narration. Plus, you can only zoom in on people crying so many times before it comes across as seriously exploitative.

The fact that the public has decidedly rejected Capitalism reminds me a little bit of one of the final scenes in Broadcast News by James L. Brooks. In the scene, the recently promoted anchorman William Hurt arrives at an airport with the intentions of taking Holly Hunter, a high-strung news producer, on vacation. Only Hunter's character has discovered that Hurt's character used extremely questionable practices in a news piece he put together. She makes it quite clear that she'd like nothing to do with him.

So I'm glad that Mr. Moore won't be in contention for an Oscar, because that means that some truly deserving films such as Food, Inc. and The Cove will have a much better shot at receiving recognition.

Hathaway Circles 'Spider-Man 4'

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:31:19 -0800

Source: Deadline Hollywood Daily

Add Anne Hathaway's name to the list of potential new cast members in the Spider-Man franchise. The fourth installment of the lucrative property is currently in the works and the general consensus is that director Sam Raimi is trying to fill the role of The Black Cat. Rachel McAdams and Julia Stiles have also been considered for the role.

This move means that Hathaway could now potentially be part of two franchises. There are still plans to move forward with a sequel to 2008's Get Smart, in which the actress appeared opposite Steve Carell and Dwayne Johnson.

Spider-Man 3 was able to rake in nearly $890 million worldwide in 2007, which easily made it the most successful film of the series.

I Lost It At the Movies

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:18:15 -0800

Dunno if you saw the Sunday Times magazine this week, but A.O. Scott, who for my money is among the most perceptive and entertaining film critics around, had a particularly droll piece on the most important and influential movies of the decade. I agreed with some of his choices (Influential: Zodiac, The 40 Year Old Virgin) and raised an eyebrow at some others (Important: Million Dollar Baby, Where the Wild Things Are), but overall it's a very smart little essay and you should check it out when you get a chance.

I should add that this part, in particular, caught my attention immediately.

Many years ago, in an age of chaos and confusion, in a world where time was money and pleasure was work, I saw a movie that changed my life forever. It was called My Dog Skip.

Perhaps you remember it. To be perfectly honest, I don’t. There was a dog named Skip, of course (a Jack Russell terrier with a taste for bologna) — who lived in Mississippi in some bygone, innocent era before the present age of chaos and confusion, in a world where . . . — but never mind. Kevin Bacon was in the movie and also Luke Wilson and the kid from Malcolm in the Middle. I recollect this stuff only because I looked back at an old newspaper review, the first I ever wrote as a film critic for The New York Times.

Dude sounds like he's been reading my mail. Which is to say, and you'll have to take this on faith, that I've reached the point where I'm noticing movies in the cable listings that I'm positive that I saw, and am reasonably sure I reviewed, and yet I can remember absolutely nothing about them. Of course, whether this is a sign of incipient senility or a comment on the formulaic forgettableness of too many contemporary commercial films is something that, as they say in the fake newsreel in Citizen Kane, "No man can say."

In any case, I suspect I've seen My Dog Skip too, although my memory of it is as hazy as Scott's. So, for the two of us, here's the trailer to jog, gently one hopes, both our memories.

Forgettable? YOU make the call!

In the meantime, you can -- but only if you must -- order a DVD of the damn thing here.

Twitter Box Office Update

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:24:39 -0800

Total tweets for November 20th Openers

The Twilight Saga: New Moon destroyed pretty much everything else movie related again on Wednesday. It rose by 9.88% from Tuesday's 65,919 tweets to 72,431 tweets which was a 'tad' ahead of Michael Jackson's This Is It's 14,732 on its Wednesday to give it the record for the day. It also passed another milestone in that it has now got more tweets in the last three days than that last 27 wide release films had during the four days before their release. It appears to be on course for about 320,000 - 340,000 tweets. Its tweet to box office ratio is going to be ridiculously high, and as such i'm going to go with a ~5,000 ratio which would give it around $60-$65 million on opening day. Expect it to be heavily frontloaded (the first film's Friday Box Office was more than Saturday and Sunday combined) which would give it a November record opening of ~$110 million. Check back tomorrow for the final updates.

Planet 51 saw a modest 20.56% increase to 346 tweets on Wednesday. Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs had 524 tweets on its corresponding Wednesday. Planet 51 is generating about three quarters of the tweets Cloudy did but I expect its ratio to be higher since it is in fewer theatres which almost always drives ratios upwards. The lack of numbers here really indicate that the film is not breaking outside of its kiddy demographic. Expect about 1,500 tweets by the end of tomorrow and a 400 ratio for a $3.75 million Friday and a $13 million weekend.

Sandra Bullock's The Blind Side jumped 26.94% to 980 tweets for Wednesday. The film appears set for a 3,500 tweet week. My estimate of a 600 ratio should give it around $5.5 million on Friday and $15 million for the weekend. Check back tomorrow for the final update.

Twitter tracking history.

‘2012’ Continues to Dominate

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:05:44 -0800

2012 comfortably led Tuesday’s box office with $4.55 million. Sony’s big-budget disaster film was down 11 percent from Monday. That marked the largest daily percentage decrease of any film in wide release on Tuesday, but was quite understandable given how well the film held up from Saturday through Monday. 2012 has grossed $74.90 million through five days of release and should cross the $80 million mark on Thursday. 2012 is currently running just 1 percent behind the pace of Quantum of Solace, which Sony released in theatres at this time last year. However, 2012 is holding up better than Quantum of Solace did in its initial days and as a result was 12 percent stronger than Quantum of Solace was on its first Tuesday.

Disney’s A Christmas Carol was up a solid 9 percent from Monday to remain in second place. The Robert Zemeckis directed film starring Jim Carrey grossed $1.14 million for the day. That was down 53 percent from last Tuesday, though it should be noted that Tuesday to Tuesday declines were inflated for all holdovers as a result of the eve of Veterans Day falling last Tuesday. A Christmas Carol has held up rather nicely so far, with the film having grossed $65.47 million in 12 days.

The Men Who Stare at Goats was up one spot from the previous day to finish in third with $0.52 million. Overture’s R-rated war comedy was up a healthy 21 percent from Monday and down 57 percent from last Tuesday. The Men Who Stare at Goats has grossed $23.99 million in 12 days, but will likely fade away very quickly over the next two weeks given all of the new wide releases about to enter the marketplace.

Lionsgate’s Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire slid one spot to fourth. The critically acclaimed film directed by Lee Daniels grossed $0.47 million, which was down 3 percent from Monday and up 104 percent from last Tuesday. Precious has grossed an impressive $9.64 million in 12 days and will cross the $10 million mark today, despite currently playing in only 174 locations.

Michael Jackson’s This Is It rounded out the day’s top five with $0.39 million. Sony’s concert documentary was up 11 percent from Monday, but down a steep 71 percent from last Tuesday. This Is It has grossed $67.94 million through three weeks of release and will pass the $70 million mark sometime over the upcoming weekend.

In platform release, Fox's Fantastic Mr. Fox grossed $22,547 on Tuesday, which was down 6 percent from Monday. The Wes Anderson directed stop-motion film has grossed $312,509 in five days from four locations in New York and Los Angeles. Fantastic Mr. Fox will go into wide release on Wednesday, November 25th.

Fighting Racism on the Field

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:03:08 -0800

The Blind Side seems like a lock to steal at least a little attention away from The Twilight Saga: New Moon this weekend.

The film stars Sandra Bullock as a frosty-haired Christian woman who takes in a homeless black teen and helps him to become a football sensation.

It’s all based on a true story, the remarkable life of NFL lineman Michael Oher and the racism Bullock’s character faced along the way for her choices.

But this isn’t the first time a true sports story reflecting the country’s racist elements has hit the Cineplex. And the two previous films of its kind bombed at the box office.

The 2006 feature Glory Road recalled the first NCAA team to have an all-black starting lineup. More recently, last year’s well acted drama The Express dramatized the formative football years of the first black Heisman Trophy winner, the late Ernie Davis.

Neither film proved Oscar calibre, but each told a dramatically relevant story that combined a social conscious storyline with crackling sports footage. And The Express delivered one of the better performances of Dennis Quaid’s lengthy career.

Yet neither film could draw a crowd.

“It is not clear to me if, in general, the American public has tired of the sort of racial barrier tales that all of these stories point to,” says Christopher Malone, associate professor of political science at Pace University.

The professor says The Blind Side does offer a few distinctions over those past films.

The aforementioned films were set during a time when racism was palpable in the U.S. The Blind Side offers a more contemporary story, not one that played out during “the waning days of segregation,” Malone says.

“So The Blind Side isn’t a ‘breaking the barriers’ story in the same vein that those others were,” he says.

Another distinction between the two, he notes, is that while Side deals with racial matters there are other core elements at play.

“There is a ‘bootstraps’ element to ‘The Blind Side,‘ combined with a sort of compassionate ‘kindness of strangers’ a la Tennessee Williams that those other movies didn’t have,” he says. “You’re not dealing with laws and legalized racism to the same extent in The Blind Side.”

The election of the first black president, Barack Obama, adds an interesting wrinkle to this subject given its release now and not a year or two ago, he says.

The book the film is based on came out in 2006.

“Certainly it was naïve to think that Obama would usher in a post-racial world. On the other hand, there is a ‘been there, done that’ quality to all of these films that might seem quaint now that the ultimate American racial barrier has fallen—a black president,” he says. “In a way, last year’s election was about as good as you can get if you’re looking for a story that breaks a racial divide.”

But that’s a biopic for another day.

UPDATED: 'New Moon' Online Sales Surge

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:43:51 -0800

Wednesday Afternoon Update (12:44 p.m. PT): New Moon has now reached the #1 spot on the MovieTickets.com advance sellers list by topping Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

Tuesday Afternoon Update (12:48 p.m. PT): MovieTickets.com is now reporting 2,150 sold-out showings of New Moon, 200 of which are spread out among New York and Los Angeles.

Monday Morning Update (6:28 a.m. PT): Fandango.com is now reporting that New Moon is the best advance seller in the company's history. The top five sellers are:

1. New Moon (2009)
2. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
3. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
4. The Dark Knight (2008)
5. Twilight (2008)

Thursday Morning Update (8:37 a.m. PT): According to Fandango.com, New Moon has passed Twilight to become the 4th largest advance seller in the company's history. The Summit release is also tracking to become the #1 seller of all time.

Wednesday Afternoon Update: "Twihards" are scooping up tickets in droves as the November 20 release of The Twilight Saga: New Moon draws near.

If the film exceeds expectations, it could end up hurting the legs of 2012 as well as the opening weekends of Thanksgiving releases such as Old Dogs and Ninja Assassin.

From MovieTickets.com:

More than a week prior to its Nov. 20 release, New Moon has sold more than four times as many tickets as Twilight at MovieTickets.com at the same point in the sales cycle.

MovieTickets.com reports more than 1,300 sold out performances for the Twilight sequel New Moon—including 900 midnight performances—with a large number of tickets still available.

“The fact that New Moon is outpacing Twilight at a 4-to-1 ratio really speaks to the incredible fan base the film has built in just the past year,” said Joel Cohen, executive vice president and general manager for MovieTickets.com. “That, combined with the increasing number of consumers buying their movie tickets online, could put this film in a position to be one of our top advance ticket sellers of all-time.”

New Moon also accounts for 74 percent of all ticket sales at MovieTickets.com this week.

Oscars Announce 2009 Telecast Director

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:30:45 -0800

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and show producers Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic have officially announced Hamish Hamilton as the director of the 2009 Academy Awards.

It will be Hamilton's first time directing the Oscar ceremony, but Hamilton has a background in live awards coverage, having previously directed both the MTV Video Music Awards and MTV Europe Music Awards. Hamilton is also slated to direct 2010's Superbowl XLIV halftime show in February.

The 82nd Academy Awards will be telecast live on Sunday, March 7th, 2010 on ABC from the Kodak Theater at Hollywood and Highland Center. Nominations will be announced on Tuesday, February 2, 2010, at 5:30 a.m. Pacific in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

'New Moon' Director Calling it Quits?

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:26:26 -0800

Source: In Contention, MovieMaker Magazine

With the sure-fire blockbuster New Moon days away from opening, director Chris Weitz has a startling project lined up next: his last. The Golden Compass director and American Pie producer (which he co-directed with his brother Paul, but went uncredited) says that The Gardner may be the capper to his directorial career.

"It’s a script by Eric Essen…It’s sort of an homage to The Bicycle Thief. On the one hand it’s a very small, intimate story, but its implications are very grand," says Weitz. "I’m always looking for my last film, where I can put the brush down, and this is the one…It’s a beautiful story…I feel that I have now spent a decade of my life in training to know how to make films—how to accomplish every aspect of it—and I feel that if I were to do this one film, I’d feel okay just sitting back and reading. I’d really like to read some books."

Continuing, Weitz explains his fatigue further. “Every time I make a movie I’m pretty much convinced it’s the last time I’m going to be able to do it and that really it’s a rather silly occupation to undertake,” he says. “But I think I have maybe one more film in me.”

Following the success of American Pie, the brothers co-directed the Chris Rock comedy Down to Earth and the critically acclaimed romantic comedy About a Boy before splitting off into separate projects (Paul went onto direct In Good Company and American Dreamz, and this year's Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant). The Golden Compass only grossed $70 million in the US against a $180 million budget, but The Twilight Saga: New Moon can be expected to break box office records when it opens this Friday.

'Last Song' Trailer Debuts

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:57:04 -0800

The combination of Miley Cyrus and a project based on a Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook) novel is bound to be a strong force at the box office.

Cyrus is coming off the success of Hannah Montana The Movie, which was able to rake in an impressive $79.5 million domestically.

The Last Song is set to hit theaters on April 2, 2010. Normally seen as a calm before the summer storm, April is shaping up to be a strong month considering that Date Night with Steve Carell and Tina Fey opens a week after Last Song.

Theroux to Pen 'Space Invader'

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:59:03 -0800

Source: THR

Justin Theroux, everyone's favorite actor-turned-writer, is set to pen the rewrites for Space Invader, a romantic comedy about an astronaut. With the Tropic Thunder writer at its head, not to mention Will Arnett set to star, the comedy is shaping up to be a big release.

Theroux's Tropic Thunder raked in an impressive $185 million worldwide and, while his name is still not all that widely known as a writer, the release of Iron Man 2 (to which Theroux wrote the screenplay) next year should change that. Given the first Iron Man's $572 million, and superhero sequels' tendencies to be giant successes, no one is really doubting that Iron Man 2 will be huge, which bodes well for Space Invader.

Theroux is also set to produce the feature adaptation of the documentary Air Guitar Nation, as well as a role in the upcoming star-studded comedy, Your Highness.

Great Lost Babes of the Twenties (An Occasional Series)

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:31:55 -0800

So I've been re-reading Sidney D. Kirpatrick's 1987 true-crime page-turner A Cast of Killers for the last day or two. If you missed it at the time, it's the amazing story of how King Vidor (the great director of Duel in the Sun and War and Peace, among others) investigated one of the most baffling unsolved crimes in Hollywood history -- the 1922 murder of filmmaker William Desmond Taylor.

Bottom line is it's a great read -- lots of sex and drugs and related dirt about Los Angeles as a company town in the silent era -- but one passage kind of jumped out at me this time around. The chapter opening below takes place in 1967.

Claire Windsor stood before an easel, studying her painting of the mission of San Juan Capistrano. Without looking at her palette, she smeared brown paint onto her brush and darkened the earth just below the mission. Even in her loose painter's smock she looked more voluptuous and attractive than Vidor had expected. He hadn't seen or spoken with her for nearly forty years, since he had directed her in Show People at MGM. Yet when she answered the door of her Spanish duplex on South Orange Drive, her powder-blue eyes, creamy white skin and long blonde curls were just as he remembered them.

I must confess that I only barely recollected Windsor at all, although I've seen Show People at least once; in any case, as you can glean from the above, she was indeed quite a piece of pastry. Apparently she mostly retired from pictures by the early 30s, although her private life (she had a penchant for affairs with married men) remained tabloid fodder for a while thereafter

I should add that A Cast of Killers is an absolutely smashing mystery story, and I'm rather at a loss to explain why it's never been filmed. Lord knows it has everything you'd need to make a great flick, including an ending that's beyond Gothic in its creepiness. You can order it here if I've piqued your curiosity.

Incidentally, famous publisher Robert Giroux, who was one of Vidor's sources in the Taylor investigation, was totally dismissive of Kirkpatrick's book; his own take on the case, A Deed of Death, came out in 1990, but apparently convinced few people, least of all reviewer Otto Friederich in The New York Times.

Hudson Boards 'Winnie'

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:27:11 -0800

Source: Variety

Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Hudson will reportedly star in Winnie, in which she'll play the wife of South African president Nelson Mandela.

This could mark a more dominant role for Hudson. After winning the Oscar she took supporting parts in both The Secret Life of Bees and Sex and the City.

The life of Mandela certainly seems to be ripe for the picking at this time. This December, Warner Bros. will release Invictus with Morgan Freeman as Mandela.

Monsters, Inc. (Blu-ray)

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:05:33 -0800

A release purported to compliment the whimsical UP, the new Monsters, Inc. Blu-ray edition (available in a four-disc combo pack) celebrates the premiere pairing of Peter Docter and Pixar—a partnership that is two-for-two as far as I’m concerned. Though less adult than Docter’s latest project—spending more time on cutesy characterization than weight issues—Monsters is a phantasmal approach to childhood lore, one that matches innocence-inspired visuals with befitting humor. The story is a new take on an old fear. Influenced by the infamous “monsters in the closet” phobia, director Docter and company create a dimension that parallels our own, only inhabited by—as the title suggests—monsters. These creatures are not without typical strokes of Disney domestication but are captivating all the same.

Rather than beguile young audiences with the surely expansive inner-workings of Monster Society, the film focuses its attention on their energy plant and those working inside it. From observing this cultural crux we learn that they generate juice from the screams of kids, thus making the act of scaring human children an essential enterprise. Leading the charge is “top-scarer” James P. “Sully” Sullivan who, along with trainer Mike Wazowski—the two are voiced by John Goodman and Billy Crystal, respectively—hope to set a new all-time scare record. Their goal is admirable in its perpetuance. Still, the two don’t view their job with the sanctimony that comes with preserving an entire race but instead perform out of civic duty and competitive spirit. Though Mike—a mere echo to Sully’s roar—does have ambitions of fame, his blithe nature downplays any would-be disparaging traits. The presence of devilish monster Randall (Steve Buscemi), also makes Mike’s shortcomings moot by comparison.

Because the continuance of their world is dependent upon scaring humans, the movie indulges in the dimensional gap between the monster’s world and our own. They enter through closet doors—portals that can only be opened with an according key card and, naturally, electricity. Some astute observations are made along the way though the picture’s hub is the relationship of Sully and Mike and how this dynamic shifts when a dramatic catalyst is thrown into the mix.

Enter Boo. A girl of about two, Boo—a name given to her by Sully who in turn calls him Kitty —finds herself on the wrong side of her closet door and begins wandering off within the monster realm. Being caring by nature, Sully and Mike find themselves her rescuers but encounter troubles (read: Randall) that propel the story into a sequence of chases and near-captures. In this, action is well composed with a noticeable premium on creativity. Docter takes advantage of the cross-world gap and pursuits seamlessly spill over from the monster dimension into ours, and vice versa. The animation of such scenes is rendered smooth and the Blu-ray transfer does well in capturing the prismatic coloration of human and creature alike. Tones are far from subtle but transfer smoothly—looking in no way gaudy. While backgrounds look apt enough, they’re pretty much given a spit shine. The real benefit of Disney’s BD treatment is in the textural nature of the characters themselves—Sully’s fur, Mike’s not-so-smooth underbelly, and Randall’s scales all look pristine. When in movement, these details look natural and the corresponding light sources and shadowing dance well off such surfaces. Throughout it all, the audio track booms decidedly. From the roars of the monsters to the screams of children—and everything in between—the audial accompaniment is contrastingly punctuated and helps evoke mood as much as the lustrous imagery itself.

The entire package—which includes two Blu-ray discs, a DVD version, and a digital copy—is another knockout from Disney. Monsters is a film of both understanding and frolicking and these notions are now preserved exquisitely in this hi-def release.

Creation

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:28:14 -0800

2009 is the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his groundbreaking scientific treatise, On the Origin of Species. Too bad that Jon Amiel’s biopic, Creation, is a rather underwhelming experience. The film recalls the events preceding the publication of this masterwork—but then it stops. Darwin’s personal tragedies and intellectual dilemmas, coupled with his moral struggles, are rife with possibilities, but Amiel disappoints. He just can’t seem to rise above the level of pedestrian drama. Without that drive and insight, and with only modest star power in the ranks of his creative team and actors, the box office returns on Creation will be rather underwhelming too.

Darwin’s scientific explorations culminated in his theory of evolution through natural selection, perhaps the single-most influential modern scientific notion. As controversial as this theory remains today, it was beyond scandalous in late nineteenth century society. The personal consequences for Darwin alone were grave; it threatened his marriage, his friendships and even his personal safety. Religion was the foundation of society, as Darwin himself admits in the film, and he struggles deeply to come to terms with the breach between his logical mind and his emotional self. These internal struggles are the very stuff of great art but Jon Amiel is too mired in the details to produce more than a mere chronicle of the facts. The pace, the visual style, the very composition of the film is a threadbare chronicle of events—and it’s plodding in the most irritating sense. Creation barely registers as an interesting period piece.

Real-life couple Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly, as Charles and Emma Darwin, labor to portray these interpersonal conflicts but are often lost in the scenery, so to speak. The film is populated with too many side stories, not least of which revolves around the death of their own daughter, Annie. Emma clings to her religious beliefs as Darwin`s scientific conviction becomes more steadfast. He’s a troubled revolutionary thinker and pores over the consequences quite seriously. He is agitated to the point of physical illness. Friends and colleagues congratulate or despise him. His reputation grows even as he naively clings to the assertion that he has no enemies. The line in the sand is firmly drawn: it’s science versus religion, reason over passion.

Amiel tries to reflect this struggle in his filmic strategies. Typically, he develops a scene in a single shot, foreground action commenting on background and vice versa. The film acquires a staged feel, self conscious to the point of being ineffectual. The actors’ valiant efforts to portray honest human emotions fall flat in this context.

Quite simply, the core issues that drive Creation require a more vibrant approach. As it is, emotions become muted and conflicts are submerged. Tension is present but it is repressed. Technically, the details of the story build to a conclusion but it is one that fails to resonate. In the end, Darwin simply finishes the book. But isn’t that when the real drama starts, when the debate goes public?

Distributor: New Market
Director: Jon Amiel
Cast: Paul Bettany, Jennifer Connelly and Jeremy Northam
Screenwriter: John Collee
Producer: Jeremy Thomas
Genre: Historical Drama/Biography
Rating: Unrated
Running time: 108 min.
Release date: January 22 ltd.

Fish Tank

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:12:28 -0800

British filmmaker Andrea Arnold's work history may be brief (three shorts and just two features counting Fish Tank) but the enthusiastic acclaim for her movies is impressive. Her talent for socio-realist drama, believable portrayals of the disadvantaged and an artist's eye when it comes to capturing their modest homes and impoverished lives has made the 48 year old director a true auteur. Arnold won the Cannes jury prize with her wonderful debut feature, Red Road, but Fish Tank, her follow-up, is the better film. A classic coming of age story about a teenage girl (newcomer Katie Jarvis) attempting to rise above her underprivileged and dysfunctional family life, Fish Tank will receive critical acclaim and strong word of mouth when IFC Films releases the drama in early 2010. More importantly, Fish Tank will exceed the modest domestic earnings of Arnold's debut feature and continue to build her U.S. fan base.

Mia (Jarvis) is a 15 year old teen living in a rundown Essex, England housing project with her mother, Joanne (Kierston Wareing), and her younger sister, Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths). Mia's alcoholic mother is more interested in her new boyfriend (Hunger’s lean Michael Fassbender) than her two daughters. With her heart turned rock solid from loneliness and rage, Mia seeks escape by Hip Hop dancing in a vacant apartment to the music from her boom box. Mia wants a job dancing at a local club. She craves a better life but the many challenges that frequently accompany poverty stand in her way.

Shot near Arnold's hometown, Fish Tank is a working-class drama that's also a feminine response to the more male-centric dramas of British filmmaker Ken Loach. It's also a believable teen story reminiscent of classic youth movies like River's Edge and Elephant.

Katie Jarvis makes her acting debut in Fish Tank, (she was discovered by a casting agent arguing with her boyfriend on a train station platform) and she makes Mia a compelling, believable waif in a grey sweat suit and heavy eyeliner. Mia is front and center in almost all of the film's scenes with an emotional range extending from dark sadness to explosive anger. Jarvis, just 17 at the time of the film's shooting, makes every moment authentic. Granted, Mia is a character close to Jarvis' own life but her natural performance and ease with the camera earns her a shot at future film roles.

Cinematographer Robbie Ryan makes beautiful use of the bleak housing projects and surrounding industrial buildings in the stunning film. Yet, Ryan also emphasizes the ponds and scenic wetlands that surround the housing projects. These pockets of nature represent Mia's hope for a better tomorrow.

Shooting Fish Tank in a 1.33 aspect ratio turns out to be one of Arnold's best artistic decisions. The intimate visual scale of the film suits the working class characters and their modest lives perfectly. It's also worth noting that Arnold filmed Fish Tank in sequence, which helps explain the cinema verité spirit of the drama. Every scene is visually striking. More importantly, there's not a line of dialogue or performance that feels false.

IFC Films opens Fish Tank in early 2010 and it's an impressive addition to their release slate. While the coming of age genre is a familiar one, Fish Tank stands apart as a more challenging artfilm for a select following of specialty film buffs. With expected theatrical earnings far greater than her debut feature, Red Road, Arnold will continue to build name recognition with U.S. moviegoers and more audiences will discover Fish Tank via VOD and home video. Perhaps, by her third feature, audiences will recognize Arnold as a talent equal to Gus Van Sant or Ken Loach. She's certainly deserving of the comparisons.

Distributor: IFC Films
Cast: Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender, Kierston Wareing and Rebecca Griffiths
Director/Screenwriter: Andrea Arnold
Producers: Kees Kasandar
Genre: Drama
Rating: Unrated
Running time: 124 min.
Release date: January 15 NY

I Love You, Phillip Morris

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:54:19 -0800

Will I Love You, Phillip Morris have a chance at the Oscars this year, or at the box office? That depends almost entirely on whether or not its central performance has been given by a man who is still an A-List film personality. The story itself—about Steven Jay Russell, a gay ex-cop who turns con man and then prison escape artist—is a tough sell, despite the fact that it’s rooted in a remarkable true story.

A character can be fascinating without being attractive, and the choice has been made in this quasi-biopic to use Jim Carrey’s charisma to paper over some very real questions about Russell’s sanity, if not the brilliance he displayed in his many daring and inventive escapes from incarceration while in pursuit of what the film presents as an unwavering quest for love. Carrey’s work deserves some sort of honorific though, even if the release of this intriguing if inconsistent movie comes at what for him is a rather delicate time.

It’s been a rough season for that benign demon called Jim Carrey—a Red Giant of a performer now sailing precipitously toward the Dwarf Star phase of his storied career. He will be blamed in part for the disappointing opening of the screaming mimi version of A Christmas Carol just unleashed upon the viewing public by Bob Zemeckis and the Walt Disney Company. The unbearable ugliness of that picture’s character design and its bludgeoning 3-D chase scenes were perpetrated on Carrey’s performance(s) in a labored post-production process he wasn’t even a party to.

What has Jim Carrey ever done but give us everything he has, every time he appears in a movie? What other actor of his popularity has so consistently steered himself toward not only major mainstream entertainments but also tricky character pieces distinguished by their offbeat sense of fun and their refusal to be easily categorized as “significant” (i.e., Oscar-worthy vanity projects)? Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind might be the best American romantic comedy of the past 20 years, as well as the most intricate and moving one. Man on the Moon took a loathed but influential comedian and left the riddle of his being essentially intact. The Truman Show gave us a fable for the reality television age before reality television fully existed.

And now we have I Love You, Phillip Morris, a gay fable of identity poised at times uneasily between comedy and drama, but redeemed by Carrey’s unswerving commitment to his besotted con man—yet another rubber faced loon with chaos, misrule and the mess of real emotion contending for mastery of his heart.

Much of the press for Morris has focused on the unapologetic depictions of gay sexuality the film contains, with speculation that a forthright depiction of anal sex and the kissy-faced relationship between Carrey’s Russell and boyfriend Phillip (dewily overacted by Ewan McGregor, one of the few players capable of consistently hamming it up in neutral reaction shots) kept Morris from finding a distributor for much of 2009. This is sadly plausible and sobering. In a country where a sentimental biopic about Darwin can’t even be screened publicly, anything is possible.

Though writing/directing team Glen Ficarra and John Requa frequently either miss or gloss over the deeper thematic possibilities in their source material (for what is a gay con-artist preying upon straight society if not a ready-made metaphor for the inability of the wider world to accept gay individuality?), they struck gold when they plugged Carrey’s deranged showman energy into their film. He makes choices another actor would either balk at or play in the muted self-congratulatory tones of Brokeback Mountain, consuming everything he touches in the eternal flame of his bizarre gift. When Carrey is onscreen, everything about the giddy, conflicted man he’s been asked to embody is either amusing, sympathetic or true.

Distributor: Consolidated Pictures Group
Cast: Jim Carrey, Ewan McGregor and Leslie Mann
Screenwriters/Directors: Glen Ficarra and John Requa
Producers: Andrew Lazar and Far Shariat
Genre: Comedy
Rating: R for sexual content including strong dialogue and language.
Running time: 102 min.
Release date: February 5 ltd., February 12 wide

‘2012’ Destroys the Competition

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:44:09 -0800

Sony’s 2012 continued its run at the top of the box office with $5.11 million on Monday. The extremely expensive disaster film from director Roland Emmerich was down 70 percent from Sunday and was responsible for over 50 percent of Monday’s combined grosses for all films. 2012 has been holding up well thus far, especially for its genre, and is clearly having an effect on most holdovers since its debut on Friday. The four-day gross for 2012 stands at $70.35 million, placing it just 2 percent behind the pace of last November’s Quantum of Solace. However, yesterday’s performance was 24 percent stronger than the first Monday gross of Quantum of Solace, which strongly suggests that 2012 will hold up better than Quantum of Solace did for Sony.

Disney’s A Christmas Carol remained in second place with $1.05 million. The 3D holiday film starring Jim Carrey was down 83 percent from Sunday, which is a typical Monday decline for a film aimed at families at this time of year. A Christmas Carol was down a solid 35 percent from last Monday. After a slower than expected start, A Christmas Carol has held up nicely over the past eight days. A Christmas Carol has grossed $64.32 million in 11 days, placing it 35 percent ahead of the pace of 2004’s The Polar Express. Since The Polar Express opened one week closer to Thanksgiving than A Christmas Carol did, the percentage gap between the two films will shrink greatly this week but should spread out again next week.

Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire continued to perform very well in limited release with a Monday gross of $0.48 million. That was good enough for third place and was down 70 percent from Sunday. Precious was up 106 percent from last Monday when it was playing in 156 fewer locations. The Oscar hopeful from Lionsgate has grossed an impressive $9.18 million in 11 days and should cross the $10 million mark on Wednesday. Precious will expand into additional locations on Friday.

Overture’s The Men Who Stare at Goats finished in fourth with $0.43 million. The war comedy starring George Clooney was down 67 percent from Sunday and down a sharp 53 percent from last Monday. The Men Who Stare at Goats opened in line with pre-release expectations, but isn’t holding up very well. With a number of new wide releases hitting the marketplace over the next week and a half, the film should continue to fall off quickly.

Michael Jackson’s This Is It rounded out the top five with $0.36 million. Sony’s concert documentary was down 73 percent from Sunday and down 64 percent from last Monday. This Is It held up well in the initial days after its opening weekend, but is clearly loosing steam as it heads towards the end of its extended run at the end of Thanksgiving weekend. This Is It has grossed $67.55 million through 20 days and has performed much stronger internationally.

Twitter Box Office Update

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:21:17 -0800

Total tweets for November 20th Openers

The Twilight Saga: New Moon continued to impress on Tuesday, bringing in 65,919 tweets. Down significantly from Monday's figure (30.46%) but that was pretty much expected since Monday night was the star-studded premiere of the film which boasted all of the stars. Besides, its not like 65k tweets is not impressive in and of itself. It blows away all other films for the largest tweet total for a Tuesday (Paranormal Activity had 11,827 on its Tuesday before release to set the old record). It also still easily beat the total of all other 27 films combined from September 18th to now (they added up to 43,556 tweets in total). I'd expect Wednesday to be level with this number and then it explode on Thursday to close to 100,000 tweets again. What does all this mean for its box office potential you might ask? Well its going to be big! Given past yard sticks it appears set for a $50-$60 million opening day. Wednesday's tweet tally will help to narrow that figure down. Stay tuned.

Planet 51 had a slim increase to 287 from Monday's 242. That 18.60% increase doesn't compare well to Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs which had 542 tweets for its Tuesday before release and a 40.78% increase from its Monday. Astro Boy had 409 tweets after its corresponding day. It is going to play younger overall than Astro Boy but still, not looking very rosy here for this film's potential at crossing over to older audiences.

Sandra Bullock's The Blind Side gained 772 tweets on Tuesday, good for a 14.20% increase from Monday. Law Abiding Citizen managed 697 tweets on its Tuesday before release for a 11.88% increase over its Monday number of 623. If it follows the pattern of Law Abiding then it will end up with 3,000 to 3,500 tweets, and given my estimate of a 600 ratio that would translate into a $5-$6 million Friday and $13-$16 million opening weekend. This is looking like it could exceed expectations.

Tomorrow boxoffice.com will put up its official estimates with input from this Twitter analysis, check back them for more information.

Twitter tracking history.

Golden Globes Adds Animated Film Noms

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:58:47 -0800

Hot on the heels of the Academy Awards revealing that next year's Oscars will feature the largest Best Animated Picture race yet, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has officially announced that the 2010 Golden Globes will be expanding their Animated Film race to five nominations.

The vote to expand the category was held last year. The revised rules for the category are as follows: Eligible films must be feature-length (70 minutes or longer) with no more than 25% live action. If less than eight animated films qualify, the award will not be given, in which case the films would be eligible for Best Picture. If less than twelve animated films qualify, the category will be limited to three nominations per year.

The 67th Annual Golden Globes ceremony will be telecast live on NBC on January 17, 2010, with UK comedian Ricky Gervais as the host.

Rob Marshall Boards 'Pirates 4'

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:11:19 -0800

Source: Slashfilm

At a Directors Guild of America screening of his new musical Nine, director Rob Marshall confirmed that he would be taking over for Gore Verbinski on the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film.

When asked if he had been offered the Disney sequel, Marshall replied, “It’s something that I was offered and never in the world thought I would do but then I was like ‘why not?’… I’m doing Pirates of the Caribbean.” Marshall also claimed he had met with Depp to discuss the project.

Years ago, Disney optioned Tim Powers' pirate book On Stranger Tides, which concerns the location of the Fountain of Youth. Since Disney has already applied the same title to the sequel, and Johnny Depp's character Jack Sparrow was last seen looking for the Fountain of Youth at the end of the third film, it seems likely that the new film will be following Powers' book, although Powers claimed in a recent interview that he had no knowledge of what Disney was planning.

The three Pirates movies combined have grossed more than one billion in the United States, with the last entry, At World's End, contributing $309.4 million to the total haul. Marshall also directed Chicago in 2002, which won six Oscars and was nominated for seven more. Nine opens in limited release on December 18th, and goes wide on Christmas Day.

Faris Close to 'Banned'

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:48:16 -0800

Source: THR

House Bunny and Scary Movie star Anna Faris is in negotiations for Wedding Banned, a romantic comedy with Robin Williams attached to topline. Williams would play Faris' father, while the mother role has still yet to be filled. The project from Touchstone has no director as of yet, and no set plans for a date to begin production.

It's been a while since Faris has had a legitimate hit, as her bigger (live-action) films in the past couple of years, The House Bunny and Observe and Report, did posted mediocre numbers at the box office. The last time she starred in a film that was a genuine success, it was in 2006 for Scary Movie 4.

That may be turning around, however: Faris has found further success as a voice actor, as in the enormously popular Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel coming up in December. Faris will also be seen next year in Yogi Bear with Dan Aykroyd and Justin Timberlake.

Space Odyssey

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:45:49 -0800

Producer Jon Landau is credited with helping to steer Titanic to worldwide success when advance buzz had doomed it to the iceberg. His latest project with writer-director James Cameron is even more ambitious. Yet one of Landau's biggest challenges during the four-and-a-half years of production work on Avatar wasn't just inventing a world, concocting a language, and blazing new trails in digital technology. The hard part was not being able to share the work he and James Cameron had done to swoop audiences into the center of the fight for planet Pandora's future. But now, finally on the cusp of the release, Landau opens up to BOXOFFICE about of one of the most-talked about films of the year—if not the decade.

Avatar is huge for exhibition. It's been the goal for this year's digital rollout—and even the future success of digital 3D itself has been linked to the success of Avatar.

I don't think you can put that burden on any one movie, to be honest. I think that Avatar is a step in the digital evolution, both cinematically from what we're able to put up on screen and what we're able to display in the theaters, thanks to digital projection. We've worked very hard to understand the strengths and the weaknesses of the technology that's available today, and make sure that we've erred on the side of the strengths.

How have you and James Cameron reacted to quotes like Jeffrey Katzenberg touting, “The day after Jim Cameron’s movie comes out, it’s a new world,” and RealD's Michael Lewis saying that the 3D industry is looking to Avatar to be its Citizen Kane?

The only pressure we have is to make the best possible version of the movie we set out to make. And I think we've accomplished that. We've also been lucky enough to share that with people—to go out there and show them scenes and clips, share with exhibitors 23 minutes of the movie—so they can see what it's like. It's not a movie that you can really talk about. It's a movie that you have to go and see—you have to experience. That's the great thing about film in general. Going into a theater and the lights being dimmed and the movie transporting you to another place: that's the magic of cinema.

As part of that magic, there's the relationship between technology and imagination. When Cameron wrote the script in 1995, he wrote it for the imagination—the technology wasn't yet even a possibility.

That's right. Jim wrote this purely for imagination—I feel like he wrote it from a dream. None of these things existed. He created that. Years ago, he worked with 3D technology when he did T2: 3D for Universal Studios. At the time, he loved the results, but hated the process because it was so cumbersome to work with. With the advent of digital technology, he can now have a 3D camera that weighs less than a Panavision camera. You can hold it, you can shoot a 3D movie the same way you can shoot one in 2D. Then with digital projection, no longer do you have to wear the anaglyph glasses that frankly made everything look like caca. The colors are true and it changes the experience. When people have seen the Avatar footage, yes it's about technology, but it's also about philosophy in your approach to 3D. For us, 3D is not about gags coming off the screen. 3D is about creating a window into a world—almost making the screen plane disappear and letting the audience have almost a voyeuristic experience.

Tell me about shaping this vision from the ground up.

In terms of shaping the vision of the movie, it was all about story. It was all about putting up on the screen characters that the audience would want to follow into a world. People don't go to movies for worlds; they go for characters. That was our focus—to not let technology get in the way of keeping our focus on that.

You have so much freedom to design a planet, design the characters who live on it—how do you know when the design is finally perfect?

You want to give the audience touchstones of familiarity. Touchstones that they can understand. We're designing alien creatures. They could have had 22 eyes; they could have one eye. They could have 92 ears or five ears—whatever we wanted to come up with. But in the human sense, we show emotions through basic functions: a smile, a teardrop, a frown. So we kept the designs of our aliens closer to humanoid so that they could be relatable. The same thing with the world. We didn't want to just go out there and create a world that was strange and odd. In some ways, we took what Mother Nature created in our world, and then took it out of context. Mother Nature has created some phenomenal things. We'd take what happens undersea at night when cuttlefish become bio-luminescent. But instead of playing that under the ocean, we played that above land. We looked at what exists in the Amazon Rainforest—poisonous dart frogs, these one-and-a-half inch creatures with bright, vibrant colors and patterns—and we'd put them on winged creatures with 60-foot wingspans. These things exist here, but we don't often see them—now, they're subconsciously familiar even though out of context.

What are some of the subtle details of the film you're proud of that might take a second viewing to notice?

It's interesting. With the capabilities of digital, each image is so densely layered with detail that in one scene you might notice the plant, but the second time around, you might not even notice the plant because you're watching the bugs that are flying by, or a floating mountain that you didn't notice before. There's a lot there and I think that everybody's going to take away a little something different.

What do you want people to be talking about after they've seen it?

That they were entertained, that it was provocative, that it made them think. Our main character goes on a journey, and on that journey one of the things he learns is that his actions and our actions affect the world around us. If some people come away with that, that would be great.

If people wanted to, they could look for modern parallels in the story. A military goes to war in a foreign country for a substance they need...

Science Fiction is a metaphor for the world in which we live—good science fiction. It should make us reflect upon how we live our lives and what we do. And I think Jim has incorporated a lot of that reflection in Avatar.

You've said that the last third of the movie has 'the mother of all movie battles'—what can you tell me about it?

When we go into battle at the end of our movie, we have the heavily armed forces of the corporation that is mining on the planet—aircraft, weaponry, the whole fleet—going up against a relatively primitive group of aliens who are on flying creatures and ground creatures. And they confront each other in a battle that ebbs and flows.

You developed a virtual camera just to shoot the film.

The world of Pandora doesn't exist. We could not go to Pandora to film. So we had to figure out a way that we could let Jim shoot this movie with the same flexibility that he would have if he actually went to Pandora. For that, we turned to what we called 'virtual production.' We created a stage where when Jim picked up a virtual camera, he could pan that camera around the stage we were on—that was really barren of any stage dressing—and he would see the world of Pandora. He could design his shots as if he was actually there. We did the same thing with the performers: he was able to see their performances in real time, work with them and compose with them with the same intimacy he had with Kate and Leo in Titanic.

How exactly was it done? Similar to motion capture with dots all over the body?

It was twofold. There were several different parts to it. The performances, we captured in a more traditional way with markers on the body and body joints. But for the faces, we went through an image-based process where we actually photographed the faces. We then looked at that photographed image and interpreted the performance on a frame-by-frame, pore-by-pore level to drive the CGI characters. James Cameron and his virtual camera were also tracked in performance capture, and it would know that instead of applying the movement of the camera to a skeleton, as you would for a body, it would apply it to a view. So as he moved the camera, he saw the real time view of whatever he was looking at.

What was a day on set like for you?

It started before dawn and ended way after dusk. It's interesting because on this movie, the blending of pre-production, production and post-production was complete. We started post-production the day we started production. We started post-production the day we started pre-production. So we'd have a day of photography or a day of capture, and at the end, we'd go meet with the visual effects company. We turned over material on a month-by-month basis so they could get the work in their pipeline.

And a linguist invented the language of Na'vi—did you pick up any?

I have enough trouble with English! I could say a few words in Na'vi, but not much. Na'vi is a hard language. When I knew we had to create a language for the movie, I thought, okay, you go hire someone and say, 'This is the word we have to say.' And they'd come up with the word. I was wrong. Paul Frommer, our linguist, took six months just to define the structure of language, which I thought was fascinating. And after that, he'd start coming up with the sentences that we needed.

Does it have parallels to any language on earth?

I think it's relatively unique. We didn't want someone to hear it and go, 'Wow, that's Watusi!” Or Maori, or French.

Your tie-ins are unusually broad-ranging—toys to technology.

We have a partnership with companies that range from Panasonic to McDonalds to Coke Zero to LG to MovieSoft. One of the things that's been exciting for us is the innovation that these companies have brought to their campaign. Whether it's MovieSoft that's been developing the technology to make the video game 3D compatible, or whether it be Mattel coming up with what they call 'eye tags,' where you can activate something through your web camera with a toy that you've purchased—you get a downloaded file and you can interact with it. It's the first time they've ever applied that to a toy line.

And up next, Battle Angel?

Battle Angel is definitely a movie that we want to make. We have a draft of the script that we're very happy with. Whether that's going to be the next one or the one after, I can't tell you at this point.

Tell me how you're going to feel on opening day.

I'm going to be very excited. We've worked on this movie for four-and-a-half years total. Four years of which, we haven't shared anything of the movie to anybody. Why do you make movies? You make movies to share them with people. So on December 18th, we're going to be able to share this movie that we've worked on so long with the world, and that's very exciting.

'20,000 Leagues' Stalls

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:27:48 -0800

Source: Variety

Disney has put a planned version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea on hold. The project was set to be directed by McG.

McG will instead focus on Dead Spy Running, a new drama being written by Oscar-winning scribe Stephen Gaghan (Traffic). The director's last effort was Terminator Salvation, which disappointed at the domestic box office before raking in $220.6 million abroad.

If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Shameless Filler (Special Storefront Hitchcock Edition)

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:32:58 -0800

True story: Back in 1989, when I was toiling at the late lamented Video Review magazine, some of my colleagues went on a press junket to LA, the occasion being the home video release (for you younger readers, this would have been on a primitive tape format called VHS) of the film Action Jackson.

AJ starred Carl Weathers, then as now best known as boxer Apollo Creed in the first two Rocky movies, and it was an attempt -- unsuccessful, as it turned out -- to establish a new action (duh) franchise featuring Weathers as a Dirty Harry-esque cop who breaks all the rules blah blah blah.

Anyway, when my colleagues returned, they informed me that Weathers, one on one in an interview, had been charming and gregarious and they'd gotten some good quotes for our coverage, but only one, shall we say, truly newsworthy item had emerged from the conversations. To wit: Weathers announced that he was in development for his lifelong dream project, one that he hoped to be able to get into production after the success of Action Jackson.

Said project: A prequel(!) to Shakespeare's Othello, starring himself as The Moor.

Then as now, words fail me, and yet there's a part of me that still grieves that the film never got made. My suggested working title was The Bitch Deserved It, but again, then as now, I'm totally embarassed by that joke. Still, I'm convinced AJ costar Vanity would have made a totally rad Desdemona

In any case, I bring it up after all these years because I just saw a video clip, involving an even more audacious prequel to a classic, that I absolutely have to share with you (and apologies if this has already gone viral and I'm the last to know).

From the obviously slick and very funny video artistes at NYSU Films, please enjoy the long-awaited backstory for one of the most influential horror films ever made, Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 masterpiece The Birds.

Ladies and gentlemen, behold in breathless wonder -- the trailer for The Eggs.

For more about NYSU Films -- at least if you speak Spanish -- you can you go here. Feel free to putter around; I'm sure they won't mind.

And if you're over your disappointment about the whole Othello prequel thing, you might in fact want to order Action Jackson here. Or not -- what the hell, it's a free country.

[A tip of the It's the Steve Simels Show hat to The Kenosha Kid, who sent me the clip]

Twitter Box Office Update

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:49:16 -0800

Total tweets for November 20th Openers

The Twilight Saga: New Moon simply exploded/zoomed/skyrocketed/amazed (pick your adjective) today on Twitter. Quite simply put i've never seen seen anything like it for a film in my time of watching Twitter, even before I formally started to keep numbers. 94,789 tweets in one day is pretty jaw-dropping. This is more than a movie, its a cultural phenomenon. To put it into perspective, that is:

The record for most tweets Monday (beating Paranormal Activity's 15,321 tweets).
More tweets than all films on the Monday of their release since September 18th (27 films - 36,294 tweets).
Monday's Twilight number is double the full week record for tweets also. Paranormal Activity managed to secure 46,729 tweets for its full Monday - Thursday pre-release week.
It is on track to have more tweets during this Monday to Thursday period than every single wide release film since September 18th (27 films - 207,755 tweets).
It received more than a tweet a second on Monday.

I can't say it is a complete surprise since it has been a trending topic of Twitter forever it seems and with today being its actual gala premiere Twihard fans were out in full force supporting Team Edward and Team Jacob. The film plays directly to the heart of female Twitter users, add in the heap of spam that opportunists are mixing in to try to profit and you have a recipe for a huge Friday ratio. It really is hard to say what it might be since there really have been no parallels, but it be very surprised if it went above the 7,000 set by Paranormal Activity. That gives it a low end of about $40 million for Friday based on these tweets with the possibility to go much much higher. Let's see what Tuesday looks like and how much the number was inflated by the premiere today.

Planet 51 was an ant to the New Moon monstrosity with only 242 tweets. By comparison Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs had 385 tweets, and Astro Boy had 378 tweets after their pre-release Monday. Planet 51 is opening in quite a few less screens than Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs which will undoubtedly drive its ratio up. Monday's tweets accounted for 16.81% of Cloudy's total for the week, so if Planet 51 follows the same path it should end up with around 1,600 tweets for the week. If this trajectory proves to be right it might be on course for about half of Cloudy's opening tally. Let's see what tomorrow brings.

Lastly, Sandra Bullock's The Blind Side actually performed really well on Monday, bringing in 676 tweets. Law Abiding Citizen managed 623 tweets during the same period on its opening week, and Jennifer Aniston's Love Happens gained 177 tweets. I'd expect its ratio to be more in line with Love Happens' but a lot will depends on how it performs during the week, its looking good for low to mid teens based on this number though.

Check back tomorrow to see just how wild the New Moon hoopla gets.

Twitter tracking history.

Sony's Strong Year

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:33:40 -0800

The fact that Sony's releases have grossed $1.634 million internationally this year really goes to show that a film isn't necessarily a failure if it doesn't perform well at home. 2009 marks the studio's strongest showing since 2006, and they've still got 2012 in the mix.

From the official release:

Also contributing to the overseas record is Columbia Pictures’ Angels & Demons, which opened in May and has taken in over $352 million in foreign markets. Sony Pictures Releasing International distributed Terminator Salvation in many overseas countries, taking in $220.6 million in SPRI’s territories.

Both films were labeled as duds based on their domestic hauls as well as the mixed (and that's being polite) critical receptions they received. With a domestic haul of $133.4 million, A&D failed to live up to the $217.5 million domestic gross of The Da Vinci Code, which is unfortunate considering that A&D is the better movie. As for Terminator Salvation, it was overshadowed by Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian during its opening weekend before ultimately posting an underwhelming haul of $125.3 million.

The international numbers for A&D and Salvation make the domestic failure sting a lot less. It's the cinematic equivalent of striking out three times before hitting a game-winning home run.

Putting aside A&D and Salvation, I'm truly surprised by the strength of The Ugly Truth overseas. According to the release, the Katherine Heigl/Gerard Butler vehicle has made $112 million internationally, which is more than the $88 million—$67.7 million of which came from SPRI territories—that District 9 posted. Go figure.

$65.2 Million Debut For ‘2012’

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:21:51 -0800

Sony’s 2012 topped this weekend’s box office with $65.24 million. That was above pre-release expectations and represented the seventh largest opening weekend ever in the month of November. 2012 also generated the second largest debut ever for director Roland Emmerich, behind only 2004’s The Day After Tomorrow (though it also ranks behind both 1996’s Independence Day and 1998’s Godzilla when adjusting for ticket price inflation). 2012 represented nearly 47 percent of this weekend’s combined box office of $140 million by itself and clearly took a toll on most holdovers.

Much like the studio’s Michael Jackson’s This Is It, 2012 is performing much stronger internationally. It grossed $165.2 million overseas, bringing its worldwide start to $230.4 million. The massive international performance for 2012 was greatly needed given that the film is one of the year’s most expensive productions. Emmerich’s previous films have also tended to perform significantly better overseas than they do domestically. Back on the domestic front, 2012 was up a surprising 5 percent on Saturday from Friday’s $23.44 million start. That could mean that the film is playing better than expected with family audiences, which would be a good sign for the film’s holding power going forward.

Disney’s A Christmas Carol maintained its momentum from the midweek to finish in second place over the weekend. The Robert Zemeckis directed 3D film starring Jim Carrey grossed $22.31 million, which was down only 26 percent from last weekend’s slower than expected start. That was actually a better second weekend hold than the 33 percent second weekend decline of 2004’s The Polar Express. The excellent hold this weekend strongly suggests that audiences will continue to see A Christmas Carol throughout the holiday season. A Christmas Carol has grossed $63.27 million through ten days, placing it 60 percent ahead of the pace of The Polar Express (though that lead shrinks to 38 percent when taking into account ticket price inflation).

Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire continued its tremendous start by placing in third as the film edged out Overture’s The Men Who Stare at Goats by $12,875 for the weekend. The Oscar hopeful from Lionsgate starring Gabourey Sidibe and Mo'Nique grossed $5.87 million from just 174 locations. That gave the film a very impressive per-location average of $33,762 and brings the film’s ten-day start to $8.70 million. Given the film’s per-location averages thus far and its strong word of mouth, Precious should continue to hold up very well next weekend when it expands into additional locations.

Michael Jackson’s This Is It was down 61 percent to place in fifth with $5.08 million. Sony’s concert documentary didn’t shed many theaters this weekend, but was likely hurt by the end of its originally advertised 16-day window on Thursday and from the new competition from both 2012 and Precious. This Is It has still held up better than originally expected and has grossed $67.19 million through 19 days. The film has grossed $155.2 million internationally, bringing its worldwide total to $222.4 million.

All three of last weekend’s wide releases were down sharply this weekend. The Men Who Stare at Goats finished in fourth with $5.86 million (down 54 percent), The Fourth Kind finished in sixth with $4.61 million (down 62 percent), while Warner’s The Box slid to tenth with $3.16 million (down 58 percent). Expect all three films to continue their freefall next weekend with so much new product entering the marketplace.

In other box office news, both Paramount’s Paranormal Activity and Universal’s Couples Retreat crossed the $100 million mark this weekend. Paranormal Activity reached the milestone on Friday while Couples Retreat joined the $100 million club on Saturday.

Edward Woodward Passes Away

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:22:03 -0800

Source: Reuters

Edward Woodward, star of Robin Hardy's 1973 cult film The Wicker Man and TV's "The Equalizer", has died at 79. His agent, Janet Glass, said he had been ill for some time, and passed on in a hospital, surrounded by family and friends.

In The Wicker Man, Woodward plays Sergeant Neil Howie, who travels to the island of Summerisle to search for a missing girl. He is misled and finds his strict Christian beliefs increasingly violated by the island's unusual inhabitants and customs, which slowly reveal themselves to be Pagan. The film, which co-stars Christopher Lee, was remade in 2006 by Neil LaBute with Nicolas Cage in the Woodward role, and in 2007, Woodward himself lightly spoofed his character in Edgar Wright's cop comedy Hot Fuzz.

On television, the actor starred in the spy thriller "Callan" from 1967 to 1972, which shot the actor to fame in the UK, and also returned for the feature film Callan in 1974. From there, he went on to do "The Equalizer" in the US, a similar show about a private detective that ran from 1985 to 1989 and garnered the actor most of his American fame. Woodward took home an Emmy for his role in "The Equalizer". A big-screen remake has been in the works for several years now.

Woodward is survived by his wife (English actress Michele Dotrice), and four children (one by Dotrice and three from a previous marriage).

Major League Baseball Productions and Screenvision Partner for Premiere of Official 2009 World Series Film

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:33:22 -0800

New York, NY - Continuing the strategy to offer theatre exhibitors compelling alternative content programming that drives revenue during off-peak periods, Screenvision, a leading cinema advertising sales, services and content distribution company, will partner with Major League Baseball Productions, the Emmy award-winning in-house production department of Major League Baseball to bring the Official 2009 World Series Film to select New York, New Jersey and Connecticut theatres. The film, chronicling the New York Yankees epic 2009 Championship Season, will be featured at participating Bowtie Cinemas, Clearview Cinemas, Frank Theatres and National Amusements locations on November 23rd at 7:30pm for a one time only event. The historic Ziegfeld Theatre in Manhattan will also hold a public red-carpet event that night with the World Series trophy on display and members of the Yankee organization, including players, in attendance. Patrons of the red carpet event will each receive a free copy of the World Series Film DVD.

In the sports arena, Screenvision has garnered strong success with several initiatives including: Mets at the Movies and Phillies on the Big Screen - live baseball game events in the New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia markets; Return to the Rafters, the story of the 2007-2008 Boston Celtics, which ran at select National Amusements theatres in New England; the documentary UltraMarathon Man: 50 Marathons • 50 States • 50 Days, which was showcased in theatres across the country and last year’s Phillies World Series Film.

“Screenvision is committed to our exhibitor partners’ success. Our growing alternative content slate provides added entertainment options that bring additional box office revenue during off peak hours. We have found that sports is an area that works extremely well in the theatre,” said Darryl Schaffer, Executive Vice President, Exhibitor Relations for Screenvision. “The Official 2009 World Series Film is an incredible and exciting sports documentary that Yankee fans have been waiting for.”

“With our expanded multi-theater HD offering of the World Series Film, Yankee fans can relive the larger-than-life moments of their team’s incredible Postseason journey on the big screen in theatres throughout the tri-state area,” said Elizabeth Scott, Vice President of Programming of Business Affairs, Major League Baseball Productions. “We’re excited to partner with Screenvision, whose network of partner exhibitors has allowed MLB to scale this event up as fan interest has demanded.”

Launched in 2007, Screenvision’s alternative content division has been able to provide exhibitors with a wide array of intriguing programming ranging from operas and sports to documentaries and children’s films. Screenvision is able to develop programming strategies for both wide national releases as well as more localized and regional events presented through Screenvision’s High Definition digital network. In 2010, Screenvision’s digital network will include 300 locations with live feed capability expanding its live event programming.

Harkins Theatres Wins Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce’s Sterling Award for Big Business

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:09:54 -0800

Scottsdale, Ariz. – Harkins Theatres was named the winner of the Big Business Award at the Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce’s 24th Annual Sterling Awards. The prestigious Sterling Award is one of the most coveted business awards in the metro-Phoenix area.

“We are humbled and honored to be recognized by our fellow business leaders,” said Dan Harkins, Owner and CEO of Harkins Theatres. “To be acknowledged for our commitment to excellence and innovation, and for our service to the community is something this entire company is extremely proud of.”

The annual award ceremony celebrates the people and companies that contribute to the community’s success and growth in four categories: micro-business, small business, big business and non-profit and includes a rigorous application, judging and selection process. Four teams of six judges each conduct an initial review of all applications and narrow the field to three finalists in all four categories category.

Harkins Theatres joins an esteemed group of past recipients which include Sleep America, Cox Communications, The Arizona Republic, The Dial Corp, and the Mayo Clinic Scottsdale, to name a few.

The Good Soldier

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:20:03 -0800

Five generations of battle-tried (but unbroken) men who wore the uniform as valiant patriots and suffered a painful deliverance from innocence are front and center in The Good Soldier. Their wars differ but their tales are eerily identical. Their material is arresting, with troves of detailed memories pouring out for the first time. These veterans shed their ranks, medals and names and what comes through are their fragile spirits; some glimmer of the young man before he became a trained killing machine. The Veteran’s Day release date should fill sentimental seats but won’t witness a barrage at the box office.

Doc makers Lexy Lovell and Michael Uys devised a way to get close to these brothers of wars. World War II vet Private Edward Wood replays the moment his head turned into a shrapnel mosaic. Will Williams was a Staff Sergeant in Vietnam; he retreats back to blood battles as if he were being ambushed right then and there—carrying a man through a monsoon while the man’s brains slip out of his head. Chief Warrant Officer Perry Parks also fought in Vietnam and refers to air strikes on green jungle villages as “hosing them down” because of the massive amount of ammo shelled-out. Captain Michael McPhearson served in the first Gulf War and is now a peace fighter doubly troubled because his son just shipped off to Iraq. And most startlingly, as a result of what Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey’s describes as spiritual deflation and agonizing regret, he now calls himself a war criminal.

Many soldiers come back from tours too traumatized to talk. They reserve the right to be silent. Given the spilling of guts in this film it’s understood why soldiers often choose to go to the grave with their war chest. Meanwhile, it’s downright uncanny how when each of these vets talk about the past he goes into the same trance. The eyes gaze to the side or cast downward and the details simply go and go: the shape of the clouds, the smell of the blood in the air. If the film was broadcast over the radio you’d think they were all comrades talking about the same war, the same despair. War is war is war: this is the underlying specimen writhing in the brush.

Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey channels the warrior ethos and admits that the killer instinct consumed him. “There is no other feeling in the world when you’re hunting another human being. The drawback to that is the fact you want to do it again because you enjoy it.” Taking a life steals a person’s morals and logic. It’s all about the next mission, the next combat role. Southern-born and persecuted Staff Sergeant Williams also copped to being “wired-up” with a hungry trigger finger. “It went beyond the call of duty. It had turned into something else,” he blasts. “I feel like I had become an animal. I could kill without remorse.”

Slogans like “Part-time duty. Full-time hero” will stick to fetch future recruits who’ll carry more than their rifle to the job, but lug heavy baggage home. That’s if they are fortunate enough to make it home at all.

Distributor: Artistic License Films
Producers/Directors: Lexy Lovell and Michael Uys
Genre: Documentary
Rating: Unrated
Running time: 79 min.
Release date: November 11 ltd.

Christmas Comes But Once a Year (A Recurring Series): Let Us Now Praise Famous Alter Kakers

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:09:00 -0800

Okay, this isn't strictly speaking movie-related, but if there's a more important cultural artifact about to be released this season I haven't heard about it.

I refer, of course, to Shout Factory's new boxed set of The 2000 Year Old Man:The Complete History. As you can glean from the title, this is, in fact, the comprehensive recorded ouevre of the incomparable Mel Brooks, more specifically Mel doing business (along with Carl Reiner) as the character originally conceived as The 2000 Year Old Jew (the execs at Capitol Records thought that was a little much back in 1961, when the first album first appeared).

The new set -- which replaces (and expands upon) a 1995 Rhino box that's been out of print for the last couple of years -- includes all five of Mel and Carl's groundbreaking comedy records, including (from 1998) the Grammy-winning The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000, in which the old guy lets on that after having seen the movies of Martin Scorsese, he's at long last comfortable telling people "F**k you!" at Hollywood parties ("It's refreshing!" he says). Pound for pound, these remain the funniest albums ever made (I know several people who to this day would never in a million years enter into a serious romantic relationship with anybody who didn't agree with this assessment), and Shout Factory has thoughtfully repackaged them along with a DVD including the famous 2000 Year Old Man animated special from 1975, several vintage TV appearances by Mel and Carl doing the character, and a new interview with the two comedic geniuses,

As I said, I can't imagine a more significant cultural artifact of any sort will be available to the denizens of our noble Republic at any time this holiday season, but allow me to whet your apetite with the one significant item of of Brooksiana absent from the set. Here's Mel, as the 2000 Year Old Man's much much younger relative, in the Academy Award winning 1963 short The Critic, directed by the late Ernest Pintoff.

Shout Factory's box set drops, as the kids say, on November 23. You can, and obviously should, pre-order it here.

You're welcome.

Red Cliff

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:04:47 -0800

That the most successful film in John Woo’s career should receive a belated and truncated release in the U.S. speaks volumes not simply about Woo’s relationship with Hollywood, but about a more general American inability to appreciate and embrace all things foreign. Not that Woo and company need any further validation from the American market—in its original two-part, 280-minute incarnation, the film has already grossed more than $230 million. But better-than-average earnings for Magnolia genre division Magnet should still serve to send a bitterly unwelcome message to the disconnected, bean-counting studio suits who originally deemed the opus insufficiently commercial for broader release.

Set during China’s Three Kingdoms era (circa 209 AD) Red Cliff centers around a legendary military clash wherein the united forces of two southern Chinese warlords—Liu Bei (Yong Yu) and Sun Quan (Chen Chang)—successfully fended off an assault by the vastly superior forces of the ambitious northern warlord Cao Cao (Fengyi Zhang). This success foiled Cao Cao’s scheme to consolidate power in the hands of a Han Emperor (Wang Ning) he had hoped to control or usurp. Based largely on 3rd Century politician Chen Shou’s Recrods of the Three Kingdoms as well as on the more romanticized 14th Century novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Woo’s very impressive “international cut”—which halves the full running time to a single 148-minute film—very smartly exploits a variety of popular genre conventions. Imbalanced battle scenarios, especially those in which the outnumbered or outclassed manage to prevail, have already given the movies multiple tellings of the Alamo and the 300 Spartans, as well as the likes of Braveheart, Lawrence of Arabia and countless others. Few, however, can equal the sheer numbers involved in Red Cliff. Outnumbered more than four-to-one (conservative estimates say Southern forces numbered only 50,000 while Northern forces were close to 250,000), Liu Bei and Sun Quan oversaw an effort that continues to be regarded as one of the great military triumphs in history.

Woo’s complete epic features a detailed accounting of the many intrigues and subplots leading up to the battle, as well as an exacting recreation of the conflict itself. The American release sacrifices almost all of the lead-in and much of the subsequent nuance to deliver what basically amounts to a two-and-a-half-hour battle sequence. Fans of epic war films may recall that something similar was wrought on Sergei Bondarchuk’s massive 1967 recreation of War and Peace, which was shorn from its original 8-hour running time to a still-daunting sub-7 hours for American release. Woo, however, has given this abridgement more careful attention, reordering some sequences and even adding new footage in some scenes to maintain some semblance of narrative integrity. It’s the way the story is distilled on a personal level, however, that makes Red Cliff work at almost any length, telling the tale through the friendship between Zhou Yu (Tony Leung), Sun Quan’s Grand Viceroy, and Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro), Liu Bei’s chief advisor and ace strategist. Further emphasis on Zhou Yu’s passionate relationship with his wife, Xiao Qiao (Lin Chi-ling) and narrative integration of Xiao Qiao’s efforts on behalf of her husband at a crucial moment in the conflict, facilitate a rich emotional subtext to the proceedings which, in turn, give the historical import even greater gravitas.

Not that there’s anything particularly original in the twists and turns—a somewhat predictable mix of Shakespearean intrigue with genre conventions common to numerous prior Chinese historical epics—but Woo’s enthusiasm for the material, his first Chinese-language film in more than a decade-and-a-half and his first period film since 1979’s Last Hurrah for Chivalry, explodes with the unrestrained ebullience of a grown man who’s just rediscovered a beloved childhood toy. At times it’s over-the-top, elsewhere meticulously restrained—the kind of uneven execution even Woo’s most faithful fans have come to expect—but never, even with major subplots deleted, do the characters fail to compel the audience’s attention and empathy. Woo’s trademark affection for such traditional ideals as honor, dignity and sacrifice bleed from the screen like proudly-suffered war wounds, gladly dragging viewers into the fray like eager conscripts.

Kaneshiro and Leung—both gigantic stars in Asia, and not without their fans in the U.S. —are flawlessly cast here, exhibiting the kind of masculine chemistry typical of Woo’s very best films of the ’80s. Supporting performances and contributing technicians are likewise impressive, all of them making the most of the more than $100 million reportedly spent on the production. Compare that to the more than $70 million allegedly spent on Couples Retreat and it’s quite clear audiences are getting more than their money’s worth. It’s just too bad that American audiences had to wait this long only to see half the story.

Distributor: Magnet Releasing
Cast: Fengyi Zhang, Chen Chang, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Tony Leung and Jun Hu
Director: John Woo
Screenwriters: John Woo, Khan Chen, Heyu Sheng and Cheng Kuo
Producers: John Woo, Terence Chang and Sanping Han
Genre: Period Drama; Chinese-language, subtitled
Rating: R for sequences of epic warfare.
Running time: 148 min.
Release date: November 20 ltd.

The Blind Side

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:46:34 -0800

Uplifting if overlong sports tale is an inspiring and extraordinary true story about a homeless African American teen taken in by a rich southern family and groomed for football glory. With a career-best performance by Sandra Bullock and a terrific new talent in Quinton Aaron, The Blind Side represents smart counter-programming from Warners against the New Moon juggernaut on November 20th. Although likely to be dwarfed opening weekend this unforgettable tale of an unlikely human connection could turn in some nice numbers if word of mouth is given time to grow.

Bullock plays a real life, determined and well-to-do white southern woman, Leigh Anne Tuohy, who convinces her husband (Tim McGraw) to take in Michael Oher, a homeless, young, black classmate of her daughter. The family later “adopts” him and nurtures him on the path to a successful high school football career. As he becomes a part of the family, complications arise and his promising college prospects are almost derailed by his lack of education. Tuohy hires a warm-hearted tutor (Kathy Bates) to help him along and the path is set for what eventually turns out to be to creation of a great All-American pro football star.

Based on the book, The Blind Side: Evolution Of A Game by Michael Lewis, the film is smartly written and directed by John Lee Hancock (The Rookie) and largely avoids the clichés of the sports drama to become a compelling portrait of an unlikely bond between two people from opposite sides of the tracks. Although it does occasionally fall prey to some genre traps (including way too much football and a couple of corny montage sequences) Hancock keeps the story on course and along the way offers up some pungent observations on the breeding and recruitment of college football stars. When the Tuohy’s motivation for taking in Oher is questioned the film really earns its gravitas.

Bullock may have found her Erin Brockovich in Tuohy, commanding the screen with grit and determination in an Oscar-worthy role if ever there was one. Her southern accent is spot-on and Hancock’s script offers her plenty of crowd-pleasing moments all of which she plays with smarts and conviction. McGraw is pleasant but not much more as an almost too-good-to-be-true dad, while Bates is spirited in the tutor role. The kids are sweet and well-played by Lily Collins and Jae Head as SJ, their young son. Aaron recalls a young Forest Whitaker in his role as Oher, the near homeless kid who rises to the top thanks to the concern of a very special woman. It’s a fine debut. Sharon Morris is quite good as an investigator looking into Oher’s choice of colleges.
In addition to Ray McKinnon as a football coach, a number of famous real-life college coaches also turn up to recruit Oher including Lou Holtz and Houston Nutt.

Considering the family nature of the story, the PG-13 rating seems a little harsh.

Distributor: Warner Bros.
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, Kathy Bates, Jae Head, Lily Collins, Ray McKinnon, Sharon Morris and Quinton Aaron
Director/Screenwriter: John Lee Hancock
Producers: Gil Netter, Andrew A. Kosove and Broderick Johnson
Genre: Drama
Rating: PG-13 for one scene involving brief violence, drug and sexual references.
Running time: 90 min.
Release date: November 20, 2009

Cusack's Possible Resurgence

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:28:58 -0800

He may have shot Will Smith to fame and fortune, but Roland Emmerich knows that his films' spectacular action—primarily the destruction of famous U.S. landmarks—has more pull than a megastar. As the director of such films as Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, Emmerich has slyly leaned toward character actors and genre stars to headline his movies: recognizable people, certainly, but not necessarily the kind of names that guarantee a massive opening weekend. Having floundered at the box office with the completely star-less 2008 prehistoric epic 10,000 B.C., Emmerich has landed another hit with 2012, a return to both his disaster-movie roots and his technique of shying away from the conventional action hero, tapping John Cusack to play the divorced father of two kids who rushes to save his family from certain doom.

Conventionally, Cusack is known as a romantic comedy star, having made his name in the 1980's off of projects like The Sure Thing, Better Off Dead... and Cameron Crowe's Say Anything... (currently celebrating its 20th anniversary). Over time, Cusack gained more traction as a dramatic actor, appearing in Clint Eastwood's adaptation of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and the Hitler drama Max, but the actor still stuck to his strengths through the 90's and into the 21st century with projects like Grosse Pointe Blank and High Fidelity. In general, his strategy has proven more "reliable" than "bankable", with these older movies settling in the range of about $25 million (unadjusted for inflation).

Recently, the actor has been branching out a bit, appearing wide-ranging films like the Stephen King thriller 1408, Harold Ramis' violent, pitch-black comedy The Ice Harvest and the family dramedy The Martian Child. The shake-up proved moderately successful, bringing Cusack's average gross closer to $50 million, but the actor's last two live-action projects, the Iraq military tearjerker Grace is Gone and War, Inc., a spritual Grosse Pointe Blank sequel, earned only $50,899 and $580,862 at the box office, respectively. Since then, he voiced the title character in the animated comedy Igor, which racked up a modest $19.5 million, and it seems unlikely that Cusack—"reliable" rather than "bankable"—would be desperate for a hit, but now that 2012 ranks among the year's most successful movies, thing may change for Cusack.

Cusack only has one other pure action movie under his belt, the 1997 Jerry Bruckheimer production Con Air, which grossed $101 million domestically (approximately $160 million when adjusted for inflation) -- the highest box-office take on the actor's resume and the only project of his to break $100 million. But Con Air had the benefit of co-star John Malkovich and headliner Nicolas Cage to take the weight off of Cusack's shoulders, begging the question: will casting against type work out?

"I think producers are realizing it's more fun to cast an 'everyman' as the lead in an action film rather than a buff action hero who only a small percentage of the population can relate to," says Jenelle Riley, National Film & Television Editor for Back Stage magazine.

No doubt Emmerich, busy handling the massive technical challenge of mounting a film like 2012, appreciates not having to worry about his lead. Even if the audience won't rush to see a John Cusack film, his career lacks most of the massive peaks and valleys most performers experience over the same amount of time, and he probably doesn't demand much of Emmerich's time.

2012 will easily become more successful than Con Air, but it also seems unlikely to increase (or decrease) Cusack's modest but healthy relationship with audiences (2010's R-rated comedy Hot Tub Time Machine, with Chevy Chase and Pineapple Express co-star Craig Robinson, will probably prove to be a better calling card). Meanwhile, Cusack looks for more projects, hinting to website io9 that he would be interested in playing the villain in the adaptation of Garth Ennis' violent, darkly-funny comic book Preacher, which director Sam Mendes is attached to. For some actors, a bleak role would be a risky proposition, but in tough financial times, compared to traditional box-office behemoths that add millions to a movie's bottom line, Cusack represents something better than audience pull: a safe bet.

Twitter Box Office Update - Upcoming Week

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 11:00:00 -0800

Yet another week is ahead of us, and with it comes one of most highly anticipated movies of the year in The Twilight Saga: New Moon. For a quick peek at potential, below is the total tweets for all November 20th openers from last week (November 9th to 12th).

New Moon was simply ridiculously active last week with a jaw-dropping, record-setting 78,268 tweets. Nothing has come close in its leadup weekend to that number. It has been a trending topic on Twitter forever it seems and the level of hype is something I haven't seen with any other film. This is an event movie which is going to likely break 100,000 tweets this upcoming Monday - Thursday period. Its ratio is going to be way above 2012's 676 since its diehard fans are squarely in the Twitter sweet spot. This is going to be a wild week on Twitter thanks to New Moon.

Sandra Bullock's The Blind Side came in second with a respectable 1,447 tweets. In terms of comparisons, Men Who Stare At Goats had 1,112, The Fourth Kind had 1,432 and Saw VI had 1,392. Looks like Bullock could be in line for a low teens opening with this film if these past comparisons hold true. Chances are it will draw an older, female skewed audience due to Bullock's appeal and since 9.75 out of 10 younger women will be lined up for New Moon. Due to this demographic I'd expect a relatively low ratio in the realm of 500-600 for this.

Lastly, we have the kiddie targeted Planet 51 which had a slim 642 tweets during the same time frame. In terms of comparisons, A Christmas Carol had 1,188 tweets during this same period, and Astro Boy had 725. Planet 51 should play to young kids and the parents who get dragged with them to the theatres. New Moon will likely soak up anyone older than that. As such it is going to have a very tough time breaking out. I would expect a very low ratio here similar to Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs's 282.

Twitter tracking history.

UPDATED: Weekend Estimates

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 09:49:37 -0800

Sunday Morning Update (9:49 a.m. PT): 2012 was able to grab $225 million during its debut frame. Pirate Radio couldn't even crack the top 10. Click here for the full report.

Saturday Morning Update (8:41 a.m. PT): As expected, 2012 is posting incredibly strong numbers. The Sony release has a shot at making more than $60 million during its debut frame. Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire is also doing very well in limited release. The Lionsgate flick is on pace to boast a location average of more than $30,000 this weekend. Click here for the full report

Thursday Afternoon Update (3:23 p.m. PT): As of 3 p.m. PT, Fandango.com is reporting that 2012 is responsible for 14 percent of daily sales, while MovieTickets.com is reporting nine percent.

Not surprisingly, Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire has made a dent in the world of online sales. The Lionsgate release is responsible for four percent of daily sales on Fandango as of 3 p.m. PT, and two percent on MovieTickets.

Disney's A Christmas Carol has shown strong staying power this week, so we've bolstered our weekend prediction a bit as the 3D flick heads into its sophomore frame.

Check out our final Top 10 predictions in the table below.

	Weekend Predictions: November 13 to November 15, 2009
	Title	Gross (M)	Cume (M)	Locations	Inc./Dec.
1	2012	$54.0	$54.0	3,404	New
2	Disney's A Christmas Carol	$19.3	$60.5	3,683	0
3	Michael Jackson's This Is It	$7.9	$70.1	3,037	-444
4	The Men Who Stare at Goats	$7.3	$24.5	2,453	+10
5	The Fourth Kind	$6.1	$22.1	2,530	+3
6	Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire	$5.1	$8.0	174	+156
7	Paranormal Activity	$4.7	$104.5	2,712	+154
8	Couples Retreat	$4.0	$101.9	2,507	-350
9	Pirate Radio	$3.8	$3.8	882	New
10	Law Abiding Citizen	$3.7	$67.1	2,071	-403

Wednesday Afternoon Update (5:32 p.m. PT): This weekend, 2012 and Pirate Radio will try to do some damage at the box office. While 2012 is obviously going to dominate the frame, Pirate Radio should serve as a nice bit of counterprogramming.

By now, 2012 director Roland Emmerich is a certified expert at destroying the world in movies. With Independence Day, Godzilla and The Day After Tomorrow under hit belt, Emmerich has earned a certain level of trust among mainstream audiences. That trust will go a long way with patrons who are looking for simple escapism that delivers on what it promises.

Sony has given 2012 a very confident marketing push. At the beginning of October, the studio released a two-minute clip in "roadblock" fashion to television viewers across the country and the campaign has only picked up momentum since then. The trailers and promotional spots have wisely played up the real star of the film: stunning special effects.

With The Twilight Saga: New Moon opening on November 20, it's particularly important for 2012 to grab as much cash as it can this weekend. The teen vampire flick is sure to steal the attention of younger audiences who normally would be interested in a second helping of 2012.

"[2012] has fantastically high want-to-see levels for males under 25," says John Singh, spokesperson for Flixster, when discussing the kind of activity the film site is seeing. "Every audience segment is highly interested in it—with the sole exception, interestingly, of older males. But given the strength in every other group, there should be no difficulty overcoming this, and with activity up more than 100% this week for 2012, it’s looking like it will have an incredibly strong weekend."

As of 4 p.m. PT, MovieTickets.com is reporting that 2012 is responsible for a modest six percent of sales, while on Fandango.com it boasts five percent. New Moon is currently dominating sales on both sites. 2012's numbers should increase as Friday draws near.

2012 should rake in around $54 million from more than 3,000 locations during its debut frame.

Opening at around 900 locations this weekend, Pirate Radio has been the victim of release date changes and even a name change—it was formerly titled The Boat That Rocked—and those two factors haven't exactly helped its chances of making some decent bank.

Star Philip Seymour Hoffman is certainly a well-respected thesp, but he's far from a reliable box office draw. Pirate Radio will have to rely on adult moviegoers who aren't interested in experiencing the assault on the senses that is 2012. Expect the Focus release to bring in around $4 million during its opening weekend.

As audiences start to catch the holiday spirit, Disney's A Christmas Carol should continue to maintain consistent earnings. Last weekend's headlines about a disappointing debut missed the big picture when it comes to Carol.

"We're in a long-distance race or a marathon, not a 100-yard dash. This is a very calculated way to release a film in order to maximize the holiday potential," says Chuck Viane, President, Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Distribution.

Look for Carol to grab around $18.5 million during its sophomore frame.

Lionsgate will expand Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire to more than 160 locations this weekend. The stark drama is coming off an incredibly strong debut frame during which it averaged more than $100,000 per location.

The promotional muscle of Oprah and Tyler Perry combined with a healthy amount of Oscar buzz are propelling the indie flick forward during a typically competitive season. The momentum is growing at a rapid pace.

"At this point, overall activity [on Flixster] is actually more in line with a major wide release than a film playing on so few screens, which are likely to be sold out," says Singh.

With its extended reach, Precious could capture another $4 million this weekend as it continues its successful theatrical run.

Fantastic Mr. Fox will open at four locations this weekend. The 20th Century Fox release is guaranteed to post a healthy location average before ultimately expanding to more theaters. It will be interesting to see how well younger patrons will respond to the style of Fox director Wes Anderson.

Check back tomorrow for our Top 10 weekend predictions as well as official location counts.

Additional reporting by Daniel Garris and Alex Edghill.

Moviegoers Respond to Apocalypse

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 07:55:01 -0800

According to studio weekend estimates, 2012 was able to grab an impressive $65 million domestically during its first weekend in theaters. The film is also a massive hit abroad. Sony is reporting a staggering $160 million take from 105 countries overseas. That represents the fifth largest international opening weekend of all-time and the largest international opening weekend of all-time for a non-sequel. 2012 was especially strong in France, Russia, Germany and China.

Opening weekend exit surveys showed the audience was 52 percent male and 48 percent female and 45 percent was under the age of 25. The film received an A CinemaScore for moviegoers under 18 and a B+ overall.

The other big story this weekend is the strength of Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire. The Lionsgate release tallied a whopping $35,000 location average from 174 theaters, pushing its cume to nearly $9 million after two weekends. Precious is bound to post solid numbers for a while to come considering that it's practically a lock in several major awards categories.

Disney's A Christmas Carol maintained its audience very well this weekend, falling only 25.7 percent from its debut frame. Carol helped push Disney past the $1 billion domestic plateau this weekend, which marks the 13th time that has happened in company history.

Pirate Radio posted an underwhelming debut with nearly $2.9 million in grosses. Focus, the film's distributor, has had an underwhelming year. A Serious Man, 9, Thirst, Away We Go and Taking Woodstock have all disappointed at the box office.

Fantastic Mr. Fox opened at four locations this weekend and it was able to steal an impressive $260,000. It will be interesting to see how director Wes Anderson's quirky style plays with younger audiences when the film expands wide during Thanksgiving.

Overall box office receipts should equal around $138 million this weekend, which represents a 7.3 percent decline from the same weekend last year. 2009's total domestic haul is currently seven percent ahead of 2008's at the exact same point in the year.

Check back tomorrow for studio weekend actuals.

Additional reporting by Daniel Garris.

Weekly Anticipation Index

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:41:05 -0800

This week, we've added four new films to the Anticipation Index. The Book of Eli, Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil and The Spy Next Door will all open in wide release during Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend. The Lovely Bones is expanding wide after a limited release that begins on December 11.

As long as audiences aren't suffering from apocalypse fatigue after 2012, The Road and Daybreakers, The Book of Eli should post very strong numbers. Denzel Washington is one of the most reliable movie stars working today and he's coming off the modest success of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3.

Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil and The Spy Next Door will battle it out for the attention of family audiences. The edge goes to Hoodwinked Too! because Spy Next Door star Jackie Chan's track record is spotty as of late.

As for The Lovely Bones, some serious Oscar buzz, the trust that director Peter Jackson has earned and the fact it's based on a best-selling novel are the factors that will push it to a strong theatrical showing.

Check out our predictions for these films as well as others in the table below.

Weekly Anticipation Index, November 14, 2009
Title	Release Date	Distributor	Opening Weekend	Cumulative
The Twilight Saga: New Moon	November 20	Summit	$100M	$255M
Planet 51	November 20	Sony	$18M	$60M
The Blind Side	November 20	Warner Bros.	$13M	$43M
Old Dogs	November 25	Disney	$24M	$85M
Fantastic Mr. Fox	November 25	Fox	$17M	$55M
The Road	November 25	The Weinstein Company	$12M	$35M
Ninja Assassin	November 25	Warner Bros.	$12M	$32M
Everybody's Fine	December 4	Miramax	$13M	$43M
Armored	December 4	Screen Gems	$11M	$30M
Brothers	December 4	Lionsgate	$11M	$35M
The Princess and the Frog	December 11 (wide)	Disney	$23M	$115M
Invictus	December 11	Warner Bros.	$17M	$75M
Avatar	December 18	20th Century Fox	$65M	$195M
Did You Hear About the Morgans?	December 18	Sony/Columbia	$21M	$90M
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakqual	December 23	Fox	$50M	$225M
Sherlock Holmes	December 25	Warner Bros.	$31M	$120M
It's Complicated	December 25	Universal	$22M	$95M
Nine	December 25 (wide)	The Weinstein Company	$12M	$65M
Up in the Air	December 25 (wide)	Paramount	$10M	$65M
Daybreakers	January 8	Lionsgate	$14M	$36M
Leap Year	January 8	Universal	$12M	$38M
Youth in Revolt	January 8	The Weinstein Company	$10M	$28M
The Book of Eli	January 15	Warner Bros.	$33M*	$80M
Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil	January 15	The Weinstein Company	$17M*	$50M
The Lovely Bones	January 15 (wide)	Paramount	$16M*	$70M
The Spy Next Door	January 15	Lionsgate	$12M*	$32M

*= four-day weekend

Additional reporting by Daniel Garris and Alex Edghill.

Twitter Box Office Update

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:19:16 -0800

2012 took in a very impressive $23.7 million for its opening Friday, the 6th largest November opening of all time, on its way to an estimated $61.5 million for the weekend. The figure was also the biggest opening ever for director Roland Emmerich, beating out Day After Tomorrow's $23.5 million. Its Friday tweet ratio came in at 676, somewhat below my initial estimate of 800 which is an indication of it also bringing in significant older audiences outside of its core 18-35 demographic for the opening. This will be a great yardstick for future blockbuster type releases in the coming months also.

Another point of note is that this film also opened in 100+ markets today as did Michael Jackson's This Is It yet its ratio was way lower. There are a few reasons for this I can see, one is that This Is It opened on a Wednesday, which means it had midnight showings, and all Wednesday and Thursday for tweeters to discuss the film which would have greatly boasted its tally. Also, This Is It had much more media hype surrounding it, and Jackson himself was such a controversial figure which boosted its buzz.

Pirate Radio was pretty much dead on arrival, pulling in a paltry $882 thousand on its opening Friday for a ratio of 2,745. I had figured it would come in with a higher ratio than Amelia's 1,574 but this was way above my initial thoughts. Focus Features had attempted to pitch the film to baby boomers nostalgic for 60s and 70s rock and position it as counter-programming for 2012. But this high ratio indicates that it really didn't capture this older demographic and missed the mark significantly.

Below is the updated chart for my Twitter tracking history.

'2012' Set to Exceed $60 Million

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 08:31:56 -0800

According to BOXOFFICE.com's Early Weekend Estimates, it looks as though 2012 has a decent shot at opening with more than $60 million this weekend. The Sony release will need to grab as much as it can this weekend since the New Moon juggernaut opens this weekend. That opening number could be slightly higher if 2012 didn't come with a tedious 158 minute run time.

The other big story this weekend is the strong performance of Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire, which will average more than $30,000 per location. Thanks to the support of Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry the bleak drama is finding its audience. The Lionsgate release will certainly expand to more locations next weekend as it builds momentum heading into awards announcements.

Disney's A Christmas Carol is holding its audience very well in second place. The 3D flick will be able to rake in at least $20 million this weekend, and it should perform very well right up until Christmas.

Pirate Radio is set to debut with a modest $3 million. Focus hasn't had that great of a year considering that A Serious Man, Thirst, Away We Go and Taking Woodstock have all posted underwhelming numbers.

Check back tomorrow for studio weekend estimates.

Women in Trouble

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:55:00 -0800

It’s a question that has plagued mankind for seconds: what would happen if Pedro Almodóvar and Quentin Tarantino lost 150 combined IQ points and made a low-budget, labor of lust? If the answer is Women in Trouble, we’re sorry we asked. Writer Sebastian Gutierrez probably thinks he’s deconstructing feminine stereotypes in presenting a day in the life of a group of intersecting women. But what he’s really doing is creating a mess of a movie with no clear purpose other than to find unique ways of getting beautiful women to strip down to their undies. This alone might lure frat boys and fetishists into theaters, but that’s too thin an audience to result in any decent box office or home video coin.

Feminine form (their bodies) and feminine function (their purpose in the stories told by the cinema) are definitely ripe for tweaking, just like any movie concept, construct or genre. But Gutierrez is trying to bluff his way into significance. Or at least create a film that moves so fast it’s over before you realize it’s added up to nothing. In the very first scene, we’re introduced to the woman as Madonna/Whore, but this particular Madonna/Whore is starring in a porno. Elektra Luxx (Carla Gugino) is an adult actress who receives a phone call while shooting a scene, strips off her nun’s costume and learns she’s pregnant. The vignettes spin off from there, as Elektra introduces us to Holly Rocket (Adrianne Palicki), a fellow adult star with an odd aversion to lesbian sex acts. Holly, in turn, tries to earn some extra cash by teaming with Bambi (Emmanuelle Chriqui) to service a Hollywood producer.

Gutierrez began as a writer of genre fare like Snakes on a Plane and Gothika. The former was a stinker (OK, both were stinkers) that was still self-aware enough to embrace the b-movie world from whence it came. Here, the director shows little knowledge of what he’s sending up, nor is he sure what he wants to say about the sexualized role of women in film, especially genre film. That’s not to say this unwieldy effort doesn’t get in some good jabs—like, for instance, the 13 year old girl (Gutierrez’s daughter Isabella) who alerts her pretty blonde therapist (Marley Shelton) her husband is unfaithful. Ironically, the film’s best part is the story that most involves a man, specifically James Brolin as an English rock star trying to convince a flight attendant to join the Mile High Club.

The outrageous early goings-on eventually give way to tear-filled, acting-class monologues that might have seemed liberating due to their naughty subject matter. But by then, the film has already reduced itself to an empty exercise in campy, color-bathed titillation, as a gaggle of women are defined by their sexual drives and abilities without comment from the filmmaker. Had Gutierrez been a craftier or cleverer writer, he’d make something out of the lesbian who prays for divine guidance before giving a masseuse oral sex, other than just putting it out there and hoping someone finds meaning in it.

As little as this works, it would work even less without the all-in performances of the cast. Take a quick look at Gugino’s credits and you’ll be surprised at the number of high-profile films she’s appeared in. However she’s yet to become a recognizable name. One hopes she’s only reduced to playing a porn actress (whose fans buy replicas of her vagina) because she happens to be dating Gutierrez. The rest of the female cast, including Connie Britton as a neurotic mother trapped in a sweltering elevator with Elektra, give uninhibited, no-one-will-see-this-so-who-cares performances. The most surprising is Palicki, as the worst-case scenario version of the Suzanne Somers character from the old sitcom Three’s Company. She even provides the film’s biggest (read: only) genuine laugh, which comes during an end-credit interlude with a celebrity interviewer played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. So full blame goes to Gutierrez. You can forgive the problems inherent to a low budget and a 12-day shooting schedule, but that only puts the onus on him to craft a terrific script. And terrific scripts, especially when the director is writing it and theatrical distribution is a faraway dream, are technically free. Too bad he’s taken on more than he realizes. And any director who uses smash cut, blindingly loud montages must know he’s putting the audience to sleep. And that, really, is the problem with Women in Trouble. Never has glistening female skin, pink panties and long drags on imaginary cigarettes, resulted in a more unmemorable film. And that, pimps and porn stars, is the biggest sin of all.

Distributor: Screen Media Films
Cast: Carla Gugino, Connie Britton, Adrianne Palicki, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Sarah Clarke, Marley Shelton and Josh Brolin
Director/Screenwriter/Producer: Sebastian Gutierrez
Genre: Comedy
Rating: Rated R for sexual content including strong dialogue, and for language.
Running time: 95 min.
Release date: November 13 ltd.

$41 Million Seven-Day Start for ‘Carol’

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:39:18 -0800

In what should be its last day at the top of the daily box office, Disney’s A Christmas Carol grossed $1.53 million on Thursday. That was down 71 percent from Wednesday, as films across the board (especially films aimed at families) were down sharply from their performances on Veterans Day. A Christmas Carol finished with $40.96 million for the week. That was below pre-release expectations, but still a noteworthy 24 percent ahead of the seven-day start for 2004’s The Polar Express (without adjusting for ticket price inflation). With a production budget in the area of $190 million, the Robert Zemeckis directed film starring Jim Carrey needs to hold up well throughout the holiday season. Thanks in part to the Veterans Day holiday and its higher priced 3D engagements; A Christmas Carol is doing just that so far.

Overture’s The Men Who Stare at Goats was up one spot from Wednesday to finish in second place. The R-rated war comedy starring George Clooney experienced one of the day’s better daily holds among wide releases, as its $0.82 million gross represented a 46 percent decrease from Wednesday. The Men Who Stare at Goats grossed $17.18 million for the week, which was good enough for third place over the frame and was right in line with pre-release expectations.

Michael Jackson’s This Is It fell one spot and 60 percent to finish in third with $0.78 million. Yesterday concluded the originally planned 16-day window for Sony’s concert documentary, though its theatrical run was extended through Thanksgiving weekend immediately after the film’s opening weekend. This Is It grossed $18.26 million for the week, which was down a reasonable 44 percent and placed the film in second for the frame. This Is It has grossed $62.11 million so far domestically, but is performing much stronger overseas and now boasts a worldwide haul of over $200 million.

The Fourth Kind remained in fourth place with $0.56 million. The PG-13 sci-fi horror film starring Milla Jovovich was down 54 percent from Wednesday and grossed $15.84 million for the week. That was towards the higher end of pre-release expectations and easily outpaced the first week performance of Warner’s The Box. The PG-13 Richard Kelly directed film starring Cameron Diaz grossed an underwhelming, albeit widely expected, $10.02 million over the same timeframe.

Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire rounded out its first week of platform release with an eleventh place finish of $168,160 on Thursday. Although Precious did lose a bit of steam from the start of the midweek, Lionsgate’s low-budget Oscar hopeful still earned a terrific per-location average of $9,342 on Thursday. Precious has grossed $2.82 million from just 18 locations in seven days and will expand into an additional 156 locations today, which should lead to a very strong second weekend performance.

Indie Oscar Contenders

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:11:46 -0800

Director Lee Daniels is candid in conversation, quick with a funny line and quicker to tease his own mother for crediting his film Precious to its executive producer, Tyler Perry.

But when the subject of the Oscars comes up, he gets uncomfortable.

“I don’t like hype,” says Daniels. “I don’t like being told, ‘you have to see this movie.’”

And he says he knows enough Oscar voters to understand they feel the same way.

Yet his independent film, Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire, is getting precisely that brand of hype from the entertainment press and critics alike.

“Oh, it’s the buzz movie,” he says. “It’s frightening, man.”

Like it or not, Daniels should prepare for an onslaught of both intense Oscar speculations and a nomination or two. Maybe more.

His new film, currently playing in select theaters nationwide, features a blistering performance by Mo’Nique as the abusive mother of an obese Harlem teen. The film also features a heartbreaking turn from its lead actress, the heretofore unknown Gabourey Sidibe.

Precious will have to compete with the likes of The Lovely Bones, Invictus and other movies made by major studios. But in recent years indie films have stood tall against their big pocketed competition, and this year may not be much different.

While Daniels’ film has been garnering buzz all year, another indie rich with Oscar potential is getting attention later in the game.

The upcoming film Crazy Heart, starring Jeff Bridges as a broken down country singer, suddenly secured a prime release date of December 16 in order to qualify for Oscar consideration. The indie film, from writer/director Scott Cooper, also stars an actor who won his own Oscar for portraying an aging country crooner—Tender Mercies' Robert Duvall.

Most Iraq War-themed films have faired poorly with both critics and crowds, yet this year’s The Hurt Locker could squeeze into the suddenly spacious Best Picture category. The film, which follows an elite bomb disposal unit, also could score a Best Actor nomination for Jeremy Renner’s terrific portrayal of the lead bomb expert.

Other indie films with Oscar buzz this year include An Education, starring Peter Sarsgaard and Carey Mulligan, and The Young Victoria, a film offering the juiciest role to date for actress Emily Blunt.

It’s hard to bet against an Oscar favorite like Clint Eastwood, whose Invictus is at the top of most Oscar lists even though very few folks have actually seen it. But independent movies remain the scrappy underdogs which routinely walk home the winner.

Despite Precious’ difficult themes, Daniels says he had a relatively easy time finding backers for the project.

“People were actually asking me to invest in the film,” he says. And that’s just how he wanted to play it. “I knew the studios would never make a movie like this, so I didn’t bother going there."

Now, he’s got a film dripping with Oscar potential being promoted by the likes of Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey. Daniels is delighted, but also torn about their support.

“Parts of me want Oprah and Tyler to ring the bell, but I want people to find it on their own,” he says.

If Precious ends up empty handed on Oscar night it won’t be the end of the world for Daniels.

“All of my awards came when the writer of the book cried in my arms [after seeing the movie], when we got into Sundance and got accepted into Cannes … and when people admitted to me they abused their kids physically,” he says. “I don’t think any award will top that.”

Universal Pays Up Over 'Fourth Kind'

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:28:58 -0800

Source: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

The poster and trailers for Universal's horror thriller The Fourth Kind tout the film's events as "based on actual case studies", but the studio, hoping to spread the film's myth around Blair Witch-style, accidentally took the film's promotion a step too far. Universal planted news articles online, accrediting them to legitimate Alaskan publications like The Nome Nugget and The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, but the papers didn't take kindly to being linked to the faux reports and sued the studio, which settled for $20,000, plus a donation to a local shelter.

Fake internet sites and stories have become common as advertisers try to take advantage of the web to promote films, with films like The Dark Knight and Cloverfield providing notable recent examples of "in-character" or "in-universe" promotion. Sometimes, this technique is referred to as an "Alternate Reality Game" or "ARG", although there is not always a "game" to play. Usually, the studios will create entirely fake websites for corporations or companies that exist within the fictional world of the film, but it seems that Universal was looking for more authenticity.

The Alaska Press Club, which received the $20,000 settlement, said the sum would double their yearly revenue. The Fourth Kind opened to $12.2 million last weekend, a respectable amount given direct competition from independent horror behemoth Paranormal Activity.

First Glimpse of 'Grown Ups'

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:52:21 -0800

For Grown Ups, Columbia Pictures put together the all-star comedic line up of Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, and David Spade. On top of that, the guys are joined by Salma Hayek, Maria Bello and Maya Rudolph, who play their wives in the coming-of-middle-age film.

Directed by Dennis Dugan, Grown Ups follows five childhood friends who reunite after the passing of their childhood basketball coach and, with their families in tow, spend the Fourth of July weekend together at the lake house where they celebrated their championship years earlier.

The comedy is set to hit theaters on June 25. Expect strong grosses.

Potter Goes Pothead

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:47:26 -0800

Sources: People, The Mirror

British mag The Mirror ran a frontpage headline today featuring a big blurry picture of a laughing Daniel Radcliffe smoking what they call "a spliff" with, inexplicably enough, a mustache painted on his face. A representative from Radcliffe "categorically denies" the lobbed marijuana charge, saying "he does enjoy the occasional roll-up cigarette," but that hardly begins to respond to Radcliffe allegedly plodding around and saying things like "I love weed." The 20-year-old actor was at a party thrown by his girlfriend, Laura O'Toole, at a high-rise in North London.

Radcliffe joins the ranks of Kristen Stewart for hot-ticket young actors "setting a bad example" by being photographed smoking marijuana. But the worst part for Radcliffe? All the bad Harry Potter/weed puns. Looks like Mirror already called "Harry Pothead" and "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's STONED."

McMahon, Others Eye 'Red'

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:28:59 -0800

Source: THR

Summit is putting together a seriously impressive ensemble cast for the film Red, which follows a veteran assassin who has to fend off younger competitors.

Julian McMahon, Ernest Borgnine, Richard Dreyfuss and Brian Cox are all now reportedly in negotiations to take on roles. Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, John C. Reilly and Mary Louise Parker have already signed on.

Summit has drawn criticism for mishandling the release of any of film that doesn't have the word Twilight in the title. The Hurt Locker, Bandslam and Astro Boy have all posted underwhelming grosses this year. Of course, The Twilight Saga: New Moon will make up for any disappointments since it has a very real shot at opening with $100 million.

Weekend Cinema Listomania: Special Coming to America Edition

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:21:52 -0800

Video Event of the Week: Could Sony's Blu-ray of The Ugly Truth, the romantic comedy starring Gerard Butler and Katharine Heigl (playing a a lonely, neurotic career woman for the third time in as many years) possibly get the nod? Might Kino International's DVD of Ballast, the acclaimed indie about a small town in the Mississippi Delta rocked by a suicide, conceivably make the cut? Or against all the odds and, frankly, every single thing that separates human beings from the beasts of the jungle, might Warner Home Video's Blu-ray of Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut (clocking in at a mere 215 minutes) in any way shape or form be The One?

All worthy, to be sure, except for that last of course, and I'm really beginning to worry about Kathrine Heigl (hey -- she produced that flick herself, so the typecasting really is a little odd). But for my money, it's got to be Brüno, Universal's new DVD of Borat auteur Sacha Baron Cohen's latest full-frontal assault on good taste.

Reviewing this back in July, I opined that it was "not as minty fresh as Borat and at times the line between making fun of homophobia and actual homophobia gets a little blurry." I also ventured that it was nonetheless mostly paralytically hilarious, and concluded with the observation that "any movie that demonstrates that Ron Paul is a clueless bigoted twit is by definition a good one."

I'll stand by those assessments as far as they go, but having now watched the thing on disc I have to say I'm less clear than ever exactly who the joke is supposed to be on, at least some of the time. By the same token, I'm even more impressed with Baron Cohen's willingness to push a gag to the breaking point and leagues past it -- without giving anything away, there's a scene involving a simulated sex act that goes on for so long that, in Christina Applegate's famous phrase, the mind wobbles. Let's just say that I can't think of any other comic auteur currently working who would have had the stones, if that's the word, to stage it.

Universal's disc version has all sorts of interesting bonus features, by the way, including a gaggle of deleted, alternate and extended scenes. Here's a particularly droll one in which Baron Cohen's Brüno, the gay Austrian TV fashionista seeking wider fame in America, encounters a certain disgraced baseball great.

There's also a running commentary track featuring Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles; much of it is fascinating, but on some level it's like watching a magician explain how his tricks are done, and I for one could have done without (although the bit about putting the ümlaut on the Universal logo is a hoot).

In any case, you can -- and on balance probably should -- pre-order Brüno
over here.

Okay, with that out of the way, and since things are likely to be little quiet around here for a few days, here's a relevant and hopefully fun little project for us all:

Best or Worst Film Whose Title is Somebody's First or Last Name!!!

And my totally top of my head Top Five is:

5. Rocky V (John G. Avildsen, 1990)

You know, I'm sure I saw this one at some point, but I have absolutely no memory of it whatsoever. By the same token, I know I heard a Milli Vanilli record in 1990 as well, and I couldn't hum it to you if there was a gun to my head.

4. Rocky IV (Sylvester Stallone, 1985)

Oh, this one. He fights the Russian, right? And it's got that really built blonde, if memory serves.

3. Rocky III (Sylvester Stallone, 1983)

"Eye of the Tiger" -- good times, people! Incidentally, here's how the song was really supposed to sound.

2. Rocky II (Sylvester Stallone, 1979)

Perhaps the conceptual masterstroke of the series, by which I mean it isn't actually a sequel -- it's a remake! A genius move, frankly; the crafty Stallone probably saved a fortune by recycling the script of the original.

And the numero uno most memorable flick featuring a single name in the title is, as if there was any suspense at all at this point, obviously --

1. Rocky (John G. Avildsen, 1976)

Okay, all kidding aside, this is a really wonderful film; as I've said here before, if it had come out thirty years later, we'd be talking about it as the greatest indie of all time. Basically it's a sweetly romantic fairytale disguised as a gritty piece of urban realism; Stallone's truly inspired sleight of hand here is to distract you from noticing what the film actually is up to until the very last possible moment.

Alrighty then -- what would your choices be?

Twitter Box Office Update

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:03:28 -0800

Total tweets for November 13th Openers

2012 finished off the week in style, getting a massive 7,346 tweets, 108.40% more than its Wednesday total of 3,525. This percentage increase was good for number 2 since September, trailing only Saw VI's 126.32%. Considering this isn't in the horror genre (which generally has much large Thursday increases than other genres due to the popularity of midnight shows), is a much larger total number of tweets, is not a sequel and has a large proportion of positive tweets is a very good sign for 2012.

Its performance today was slightly ahead of my Wednesday estimate of 15,000 tweets as it ended up with 16,025 on the week. I'll bump up my ratio estimate slightly to 800 for a $20 million Friday, and a $54 million weekend. There is little doubt that it is going to break out given this level of interest. It is also a great experiment in terms of tweet tracking blockbusters, something that will surely come in handy over the holidays and into Summer 2010.

Pirate Radio had a very respectable 1,095 tweets on Thursday, an increase of 74.64% over Wednesday. My estimate of 2,300 total tweets was close enough as it finished with 2,421. Like 2012 there really is a skimpy record of similar films in my tweet database, but the closest is still Amelia given its slim theatre count and older appeal. I think Pirate Radio will have more of a younger appeal than Amelia which should drive its ratio up slightly. Expect a 1,750 ratio and a $1.35 million Friday and about a $3.8 million weekend.

Please check back on Saturday for a recap on Friday's numbers and analysis of the resulting ratios.

Below is the full chart for my Twitter tracking history.

Oh My God

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:12:27 -0800

For his documentary, Oh My God, first-time director Peter Rodger travels the globe gathering interviews on the subject of God and picking up some interesting souvenirs along the way. Stepping in front of the camera to share his opinions and become a subject of his movie, Rodger is an able tour guide but lacks the charisma of other doc figureheads Michael Moore or Chris Rock. More average Joe than a compelling expert; Rodger fails to make Oh My God more than a travelogue. While beautiful photography of the faraway lands Rodger visits and crisp editing keep the movie flowing at a fast pace, Oh My God remains a hit-and-miss collection of interviews that fail to create a single, compelling message. A strong outreach campaign to various religious groups and marketing that emphasizes the film's newsworthy elements will help attract modest support from fans of socio-political documentaries. However, Rodger fails in his role as on-camera figurehead, which makes crossover business unlikely for the Mitropoulos Films release in November.

Oh My God is as much about Rodger's growing awareness about the world's various religions as it is about the history of religion in culture and its powerful role in world politics today. Some of Rodger's interviews are more interesting than others; Ringo Starr and Bob Geldof offer particularly amusing insights. However, what's clear midway into the movie is Rodger's inability to get something fresh or exciting from the religious leaders, odd celebrities and average folks he interviews on his travels to India, Guatemala, Israel and many points in-between.

Rodger works from his own script so any criticism with the questioning lies solely on his shoulders. He's more successful as the film's cameraman and fills Oh My God with beautiful images of the open highway, mountainous vistas and ancient ruins. Editor John Hoyt keeps the globetrotting coherent and lively. Composer Alexander Bubenheim perfectly matches the film's photography with wonderful world music. When the image and the music come together beautifully, which happens on more than one occasion, Oh My God resembles the classic landscape doc Powaqqatsi. Still, Rodger has made a political documentary, although one that fails to enlighten or offer anything new to the topic.

Rodger, who takes on a courageous amount of responsibilities for his first feature, proves to be a better cameraman than onscreen moderator. Oh My God is a good and timely topic but Rodger fails to make a movie as complex and fascinating as the religious leaders he meets. One scene, involving a devout Muslim attempting to find a particular passage in the Koran comes off as a bad joke. Rodger also struggles to find an appropriate ending for the film and as a result Oh My God seems over-long.

Still, Oh My God is a welcome alternative to the abundant political docs dealing with the environment, food and "green" lifestyle choices. Religion and God are good subjects for a documentary and hopefully another director will take a shot. As for Rodger, Oh My God is a solid first feature, one that earns him another shot in the director's chair. Next time he may want to stay out of the picture.

Distributor: Mitropoulos Films
Cast: Ringo Starr, Hugh Jackman, Baz Luhrmann and Bob Geldof
Director/Screenwriter/Producer: Peter Rodger
Genre: Documentary
Rating: Unrated
Running time: 93 min.
Release date: Nov. 13, 2009 NY and LA

Collapse

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:58:58 -0800

Collapse is an intriguing, topical documentary that might be coming out just a little early or a bit late. Director Chris Smith was researching a narrative about drug dealers when he came across Michael Ruppert, a former cop, noted conspiracy buff and unheeded Cassandra whose tiny newsletter predicted that fancy financial instruments like mortgage-backed securities were going to take down the US and global economy. He turned out to be right, and Smith found in interviewing Ruppert that there was a greater subject to be mined from what he originally thought was just another would-be expert on drugs and corruption within the LAPD.

At first glance, Collapse is an odd work coming from a filmmaker still most closely associated with the hilarious and intimate character study American Movie (1999), a comparative bear hug of a picture devoted to unskilled filmmaker Mark Borchardt and his undying dreams. Based primarily on a single multi-cam interview filmed in part by the great Ed Lachman, Collapse is cold, precise and stylistically very (if not overly) derivative of Errol Morris’ Oscar-winning The Fog of War. It’s an influence the filmmakers cheerfully acknowledge, but one that probably shouldn’t have extended all the way to a slavish imitation of Philip Glass’s arpeggio-laden score, an overworked trope that really should be banned from indie movies for at least the next 50 years. Like Morris’ work, which was essentially an illustrated and very detailed interview with Vietnam War architect Robert McNamara, the idea behind Collapse is to create an editorially intense look at one single human mind as it simultaneously grapples with vast issues and internal demons, and to use the subtleties of scoring and visual juxtaposition to immerse the viewer in another’s thought processes in an unobtrusive but potent way.

The cool Morris palette shows its strengths and its weaknesses in Smith’s capable hands. There are many moments of creeping intensity and catharsis in this portrait of Ruppert, and they sneak up on the viewer so stealthily that the reaction can be like the adrenaline jolt from a horror movie. There are other times when the refusal to allow another voice into the discussion lets dubious details hang, as when Ruppert alleges his publication was shut down by a break in from dark governmental powers he does not name, and a photo of smashed computers is allowed to stand unchallenged and uninvestigated as proof of Ruppert’s charges.

A challenger seems needed, because it does gradually dawn on the viewer that Ruppert is in the grip of a compulsion, and that as articulate and certain as he seems, there is a damaged and possibly unreliable narrator underneath. As Ruppert’s controlled exterior begins to crack under the polite but insistent scrutiny of Smith’s questions, the film’s title stands revealed as a double meaning: is it the collapse of an economy we’re watching, or the downfall of a paranoid mind?

This transformation of a human subject under the scrutiny of the lens is more riveting and accomplished than anything Morris captured in The Fog of War, and it also marks Collapse as an overt descendent of American Movie, which likewise investigated a man’s eccentricities as a way of understanding him. Though flawed a bit by the familiarity of its editorial grammar and visual palate, Collapse therefore deserves to be seen. But in this Indian summer moment of jobless recovery, has Smith entered the argument too long after the first shoe hit the floor? Or could it be that he’s just a bit too far ahead of another shoe waiting to so catastrophically drop?

Distributor: Vitagraph
Cast: Michael Ruppert
Director: Chris Smith
Producer: Kate Noble and Chris Smith
Genre: Documentary
Rating: Unrated
Running time: 80 min.
Release date: November 6 NY

Dare

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:49:32 -0800

A yearning-and-identity triangle featuring three kids at an affluent suburban high school is the stuff of Dare, a modest indie out of this year’s Sundance fest. Quite good in brief stretches but not distinguishable enough overall, freshman director Adam Salky’s picture evinces the coming of age confusion he’s chronicling. Sputtering yet respectable, it will form a blip on performance charts and will be remembered, if at all, as an early credit on the resumes of a few youngish—that is, far beyond teenage—talents.

Emmy Rossum limns virginal aspiring actress Alexa. Ashley Springer (Teeth) is her best friend Ben and Friday Night Lights’ Zach Gilford plays sensitive jock Johnny Drake. Alexa and Johnny are scene partners in acting class (A Streetcar Named Desire, no less) She’s frustrated by his Brando-esque nonchalance and he’s turned off by her goodie-two-shoes, kiss-ass ways.

Following a harsh and humorous tutorial from the school’s only grad to make it as a thespian (Alan Cumming, nailing it) and with the help of her more experienced frenemy, Courtney (Rooney Mara), Alexa reinvents herself as a hot vamp. During a party, she literally throws herself at Johnny and when they become an item, techie Ben, watching from his perch behind the theater lighting board, is jealous. In effect, he’s dared by his mother to act out on his same-sex longings and he targets none other than Johnny.

The sex scenes are an effectively discomfiting blend of ickiness and eroticism. On the one hand, we cringe as Alexa deflowers herself by straddling a startled Johnny and as Ben plucks up the courage to make a pass at Johnny in the latter’s indoor pool. On the other, the sequences evoke envy and tenderness toward the young adults as they grope toward self-awareness. (And lest we be too condescending, the teens do get what they’re after.) Hats off to Salky for hitting his targets. He misses, however, when it comes to pacing. The longeurs within virtually every scene in the movie are annoying. Once he realizes that not every pause is meaningful and starts to speed things up, he could become a filmmaker to reckon with.

His well-observed handling of conversations between Johnny and Ben’s mother (Ana Gasteyer) as well as an understatedly hilarious scene (hint: popcorn and a Ken Burns documentary anyone?) at Ben’s house, where Alexa is staying while her parents are out of town, also deserve favorable mention. Gilford and Mara—smoldering and electric screen presences, respectively—are the acting standouts. For her part, Rossum succeeds in making one forget Joel Schumacher’s Phantom of the Opera (in which, she played Christine).

The psychology underlying David Brind’s script is basic and the premise predictable, but they do give rise to the occasional dead-on mood and a sufficient sense that each character is more than a type. If the story were more fully developed, Dare could garner a following in, say, more edgy personal development curricula or in college towns amongst nostalgic first-years. As it is, the ending is terribly abrupt and less than edifying.

Distributor: Image Entertainment
Cast: Emmy Rossum, Ashley Springer Zach Gilford, Rooney Mara, Ana Gasteyer, Alan Cumming and Sandra Bernhard
Director: Adam Salky
Screenwriter: David Brind
Producers: Mary Jane Skalski and Jason Orans
Genre: Drama
Rating: R for sexual content, language and alcohol use - all involving teens.
Running time: 90 min.
Release date: November 13 NY/LA

Love Hurts

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:36:35 -0800

When you consider 2009’s sorry slate of romantic comedies (New in Town, anyone?), the problems with Barra Grant’s Love Hurts are easier to forgive. Hand a studio $40M and Katherine Heigl and you’re pretty much assured of a schematic tale of female empowerment as defined by a woman’s ability to land a man. Hand an independent producer $7.5M and a young indie cast, however, and you’re happily watching (500) Days of Summer. Grant’s film, the most high-profile project for this 1970s actress turned writer turned writer/director, costs even less. And the movie, about a Long Island doctor reeling after his wife leaves him, does show glimmers of promise. But the demoralizing and generally lame over-the-top humor feels targeted to studio sensibilities, as if Grant is trying to prove she can run with the biggest names in romcoms. Love Hurts never escapes that unconvincing middle ground, although it makes you wonder what Grant would do if handed $7.5M, a young, indie cast and permission to indulge her less formulaic impulses.

Men and women process breaking up differently and most romantic comedies focus on the ladies. Here, Grant takes the quivering and the tears and the pity and assigns them to the guy. Ben (Richard E. Grant, possibly because Hugh Grant was too expensive) is a Manhasset ear, nose and throat doctor whose longtime wife is landscape artist Amanda (Carrie-Anne Moss). With teenage son Justin (Johnny Pacar) about to leave for college, their marriage has reached its dead shark phase. At least it has for Amanda. Staring out her kitchen window at her unfulfilled dreams, she’s empty and unsatisfied. But Ben is so oblivious to her despair that when he learns Amanda is seeing a shrink, he thinks it’s to discuss her mother. Soon, Amanda has moved out, leaving a Dear John letter thicker than a thesis paper. Ben can’t understand why Amanda bolted and thinks plastic surgery might ease her marital angst. Ben’s cluelessness can either be played for great laughs or great conflict. Here, it’s neither and these early scenes presage what will and won’t click in Love Hurts. As Amanda, Moss is the only performer who doesn’t realize this is a romantic comedy and thank goodness for that. She’s the ballast, the film’s broken, beating heart. But Grant (the director) bets everything on Grant (the actor). The Swaziland-born star of Withnail and I uncorks that specific brand of British befuddlement that should have been doled out more conservatively. Grant is a card the director overplays, even before he gets a jellybean in the eye and even after he puts a jock strap on his head.

With Amanda enjoying the favors of a hunky, shirtless local, Ben wallows in his own pathetic crapulence (his drink of choice is the sloe gin fizz) and plays video games with Justin and his Central Casting group of bickering buds. Taking pity on pop, Justin oversees the Pygmalion-like transformation of his father into a middle-aged Lothario who sports $285 haircuts and designer threads. With the rejuvenated Ben juggling a hot pants-wearing nurse (Jenna Elfman), a Jewish personal trainer (Janeane Garofalo) and buxom, twin karaoke singers, he returns the favor by helping Justin pursue a beautiful Russian ballerina (Olga Fonda). Call it a postmodern spin on the ’80s body switching genre, where a supernatural force causes father and son to swap bodies. Here, they swap the bits of their experience that benefit the other. Which is not to say Love Hurts is any more realistic than 1988’s Vice Versa. Any normal 17 year old boy would hurl upon learning of the bed-hopping ways of his father. Abetting it is downright weird. And it’s a good thing Justin is already a handsome young chick magnet, because Ben’s displays of emotional fragility would embarrass Robert Bly.

Grant, who also wrote the script, draws clean character lines and effortlessly navigates three narrative threads. This is not muddy storytelling, just bipolar and unconvincing, as Grant force-feeds us comedy to soften us up for the emotional kill. She gives her lead actor too much latitude, intent on taking full advantage of a casting coup. Grant spits, drools, cries and sings as if performing the comedy version of Jason Statham’s character in Crank. But Love Hurts comes alive when the mugging stops. Late in the game, there are nice moments of regret and longing that are more genuine then when other films of this type hit those same beats. Still, Ben’s plan to win back Amanda has less to do with committing to a more fulfilling future than reminding her of their shared and happy past. The former is harder to dramatize, while the latter leads to silly and false notes better suited to lazier, bigger budgeted product. Indeed, Ben teaches Justin a lot about love, including the most important lesson of all: don’t toss your old Halloween costumes. Your marriage might depend on it.

Distributor: Lantern Lane Entertainment.
Cast: Richard E. Grant, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jenna Elfman, Janeane Garofalo and Camryn Manheim
Director/Screenwriter: Barra Grant
Producer: Brian Reilly
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Rating: PG-13 for some drug content and language including sexual references.
Running time: 95 min.
Release date: November 13 LA

‘Christmas Carol’ Leads Veterans Day

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:44:04 -0800

Veterans Day is normally a very strong day at the box office when it falls during the midweek and yesterday was no exception to that rule. On a day where films aimed at family audiences saw very large spikes in business, Disney’s A Christmas Carol led the way with $5.36 million. That was up 122 percent from Tuesday and brings the film’s six-day gross to $39.43 million. The Robert Zemeckis directed 3D film starring Jim Carrey opened below expectations over the weekend, but has held up nicely during the midweek thanks to the holiday and solid early word of mouth. A Christmas Carol is running 24 percent ahead of The Polar Express so far and looks to be in store for a strong second weekend hold over the upcoming weekend.

Michael Jackson’s This Is It remained in second place with $1.98 million. Sony’s concert documentary presenting the final rehearsals of the late pop icon was up 46 percent from Tuesday and down 6 percent from last Wednesday. This Is It crossed the $60 million mark yesterday and will likely reach the $70 million mark either by the end of the weekend or sometime early next week. This Is It continues to perform especially well internationally, as the film’s worldwide total has now passed the $200 million mark.

Overture’s The Men Who Stare at Goats was up 25 percent from Tuesday to remain in third. The war comedy starring George Clooney grossed $1.52 million for the day, bringing its six-day total to $16.36 million. The Men Who Stare at Goats is performing in line with per-release expectations thus far. Overture also claimed fifth place for the day, as its Law Abiding Citizen was up one spot and up 36 percent from Tuesday with a daily take of $0.96 million.

The Fourth Kind held in fourth place with $1.20 million. The sci-fi horror film starring Milla Jovovich was up just 10 percent from Tuesday, which represented one of the smaller daily increases for any film in wide release yesterday. However, it should be noted that horror films traditionally see the smallest daily increases on Veterans Day. Paramount’s Paranormal Activity and Lionsgate’s Saw VI further illustrated that trend by experiencing respective daily increases of only 10 percent and 6 percent.

As was mentioned earlier, films aimed at families saw exceptional daily increases yesterday. Warner’s Where the Wild Things Are was up 149 percent to finish in sixth and crossed the $70 million mark in the process. Summit’s Astro Boy was up 380 percent from Tuesday to gross $0.76 million for the day, while Sony’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was up an even larger 418 percent to gross $0.47 million. Expect all three films to experience sizable decreases today.

BOXOFFICE.com's predictions for the weekend can be read here.

Christmas Vacation Ultimate Collector's Edition (Blu-ray)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:35:25 -0800

The door opens and bodies pour in. A wave of limbs, bad suits, and pungent perfume overtakes the foyer; the camera is angled low, the characters’ hopes lower. Emerging from the swarm is Johnny Galecki as Rusty Griswold—an adolescent left disoriented in the wake of his elder relatives—who looks at the camera and delivers one of the best facial expressions in film history. The boy looks as if he’s just had a glimpse of hell, and in some ways he has, for the Griswold Christmas gathering is the pinnacle of perennial punishment. Galecki’s look is a summation of what’s to come; namely the ridiculous—oftentimes laughable—lengths we go to in the name of the holiday spirit.

The third adventure for the Griswold gang, Christmas Vacation details the frustrations of the holiday season by showing the gradual deterioration of family bonds, holiday warmth, and dogmatic piety—the result of capital extravagance and should-be-defunct traditions—before reminding viewers just how important compassion can be, provided it’s not turned into a commodity. Thematic concerns notwithstanding, the film is a comedy and revels in physical humor; it’s a movie set in the real but is not without examples of stilted bodily resilience. The family themselves represent a typical Midwestern household—caricatures of familiar nuclear families, though their personalities are never exaggerated to the point of disbelief. People like this could very well exist and odds are we all know one or two. The most telling trait of the featured players is their merriment, as their differing holiday views often pave the wave for confrontation and, subsequently, laughter.

Clark (Chevy Chase) is the patriarchal head of the Griswold family. Steeped in sentiment, Clark wants his family to experience the prototypical ol’ fashion Christmas, but soon learns that such a thing comes at the cost of physical and mental health. His penchant for holiday hoopla is lost on his children Rusty and Audrey (Juliette Lewis), who are reaching the age when kids begin branching off socially. Their father is fully aware of this and thus theorizes that by helming the best Christmas ever paternal bonds will be restored. In short, all will again “be right” with the Griswolds. This being a comedy, obstacles naturally arise. Many of these hindrances take the form of in-house quarreling and material emphasis. Vital to the perfect Christmas is Clark’s bonus check, the status of which is unknown—jettisoning the fancy of family harmony into limbo. Meanwhile, wife Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo) remains supportive, but noticeably worried.

Family spats rise in frequency as more and more Griswolds—some expected, some not—arrive at Clark’s house. As if the parents-in-law weren’t enough, other, more exaggerated relatives make appearances as well. Cousin Catherine (Miriam Flynn) and lovable drunk of a husband Eddy (Randy Quaid) arrive and come to break every norm and value that Clark holds dear. Though also family-oriented, their less-than-polished social skills begin rubbing Clark the wrong way, which challenges his moral stance toward lower-class citizens. This issue of class resentment is nothing new to the film, for Clark’s boss (Brian Doyle-Murray) is a walking model of self-anointed superiority. Such parallels are hardly dealt with much sincerity, though the presence of such culture contrasts are inviting nonetheless. Other random arrivals include stogy-smoking Uncle Lewis (William Hickey) and his wife Aunt Bethany (Mae Questel) who—while not as theoretically rich as other characters—generate some of the heaviest laughs of the film in the way they exercise just how out of touch one grows with age and the troubles we unknowingly put others through as our capacities (hilariously) diminish.

Though hardly a film of complexity, Christmas Vacation does well in demonstrating the difficulties we thrust upon ourselves every December and begs the question, “To what end?” Nonetheless, Vacation never loses sight of its comedic scope and is ever ready with a clever gag or turn of phrase. It has garnered the reputation of being a holiday staple and rightfully so.

Transfer

Not being a film of heavy aesthetic concern, it’s of little surprise that Vacation looks less than optimal on Blu-ray, but I still find this Warner Bros. treatment to be subpar. The image is for the most part clean, but not without some scratches scattered about. Skin tones are perhaps a bit too warm, and sometimes—especially during interior scenes—are a bit heavily hued. Noise is apparent as expected, and consistently so. I was not able to spot any DNR in dark areas, though the detail here isn’t very good either. In fact, visual intricacy as a whole is below average for BD releases, yet the busier imagery is a bit crisper and transitions more smoothly than previous DVD versions. Bright, exterior scenes fare best and such moments—rare as they may be—do offer a more pleasing picture.

Packaging

In a clever, self-satirizing way, the tin box gift package works. Though tacky looking—purposefully so—the cover art commemorates the Griswold spirit in a way that only bright colors and gaudy pictures can convey. The trivial tokens that accompany the Blu-ray disc are odd, yet useful. These extra gifts, if you will, recall charming little movie-themed stocking stuffers and include beverage coasters, a Santa hat, and fake snow. Perhaps these items seem generic, but I feel they're justified in expressing the thoughtlessness that perpetuates the season's gift giving. In other words, they're fun, and in the same vain as the film itself.

'This Is It' Reaches $200 Million Worldwide Plateau

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:51:31 -0800

Sony Pictures announced today that Michael Jackson's This Is It has raked in more than $200 million across the globe. $61 million domestically, and $140 million worldwide.

While the concert flick didn't quite live up to the astronomical expectations it was saddled with, it still managed to claim the title of the most successful concert film of all time after just one weekend.

Sony understandably extended This Is It's planned two-week run until Thanksgiving.

Martin Scorsese to Receive Cecil B. DeMille Award

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:11:50 -0800

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has chosen director Martin Scorsese as their pick for the Cecil B. DeMille award, for his "outstanding contribution to the entertainment field."

The award is to be presented at the 67th Annual Golden Globe Awards on January 17th, 2010, which will be hosted by Ricky Gervais. Previous winners of the Cecil B. DeMille Award include Steven Spielberg, Warren Beatty, Anthony Hopkins, Robin Williams and Michael Douglas.

In 2007, Scorsese took home the Golden Globe for "Best Director of a Motion Picture" for The Departed, which also finally garnered him a Best Director Academy Award win (after five previous nominations). Previously, Scorsese won a Golden Globe for directing Gangs of New York, and was nominated for his direction of Casino, The Age of Innocence, Goodfellas and Raging Bull, plus one other nomination for the Raging Bull screenplay (which he co-wrote with Nicholas Pileggi).

First Look at 'Date Night'

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:16:29 -0800

I was sold on Date Night from the very moment I heard that it would be starring Steve Carell and Tina Fey. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

As far as I'm concerned, both Carell and Fey have made successful leaps to the big screen. I enjoyed Carell's work in Dan in Real Life and Get Smart, and Fey did a great job with Baby Mama.

While the trailer for Date Night isn't necessarily as hilarious as I hoped it would be, it certainly works. My main complaint is that co-stars Mark Ruffalo and Kristen Wiig are nowhere to be seen. The idea of Ruffalo, who is by far one of the best dramatic actors working today, and Wiig, the current dominant force on Saturday Night Live, playing off of each other is just as enticing as the Carell/Fey combo.

I don't want to get into any kind of specific predictions for a movie that isn't opening until April, but there's no way this one won't be a huge success at the box office. For a little perspective, Baby Mama opened to $17.4 million in April 2008, while Get Smart landed with $38.7 million in June 2008. There's no doubt in my mind that Date Night will easily top Baby Mama's debut haul. That's a given. I also wouldn't be surprised if it surpassed Get Smart's opening. This is a "date movie" that guys won't have to be dragged to.

HD 3D Concerts to be Released in Theaters

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:45:09 -0800

Source: Variety

This December, Larger Than Life... in 3D Featuring the Dave Matthews Band, Ben Harper and Relentless7 and Gogol Bordello will be released in week-long stints, on 300-400 digital screens, the first of many HD 3D concert films to be put out by the partnership of AEG Live and Action 3D. The film is a piecing-together of several concerts from this year's Austin City Limits festival.

While concert footage in theaters is nothing new, this film comes on the heels of the enormous success of Michael Jackson's This Is It, which brought in has grossed an unprecedented $175 million worldwide, according . If Larger Than Life does well, expect a whole slew of HD 3D concert footage in theaters over the next few years, as AEG Live and Action 3D claims to already have full footage of 56 different bands already from festivals like Lollapalooza and All Points West, with plans to have 150 by 2010.

Sony will be getting into the 3D concert game in April with Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3D, while AEG Live and Action 3D plans to release a follow-up to Larger Than Life in 2010, featuring a compilation of acts from Austin City Limits and Lollapalooza. Larger Than Life joins the ranks of other December 3D tentpole films, like James Cameron's Avatar, to be released December 18.

Keitel Joins 'Fockers'

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:46:27 -0800

Source: Variety

Harvey Keitel has signed on to play a role in Little Fockers, the third installment in the Meet the Parents series. Keitel will play a contractor hired by Ben Stiller's character, Greg Focker.

Keitel is not the only new face to join the Parents universe. Jessica Alba and Laura Dern have also accepted parts in the project.

Box office expectations will be high for Fockers, considering that 2000's Meet the Parents grossed $166.2 million domestically ($221 million when adjusted for inflation) and 2004's Meet the Fockers brought in $279.2 million ($322 million when adjusted for inflation).

MGM Set to Land on Chopping Block

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:30:43 -0800

Source: Variety

After struggling through years of financial woes, it should come as no surprise that MGM is going to be auctioned off in the next couple of weeks. Whether one of the major studios scoops it up or an independent investor steps in, the winning bidder will ultimately take hold of the studio's library of 4,000 titles.

MGM recently failed to capitalize on the recent demand for musicals with Fame, which has grossed a paltry $22.3 million domestically. 2010 does look promising for the studio with Hot Tub Time Machine being touted as a potential comedic sleeper hit and The Zookeeper with Kevin James.

Video Notes From All Over

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:08:21 -0800

Okay, here's the good news: You can finally get a DVD of Telstar: The Movie -- the critically acclaimed 2008 bio-pic on 60s howling weirdo record producer Joe Meek -- over at Amazon.

The bad news: You need a Region 2 player to be able to watch it.

The short version: Telstar, named after its auteur's multi-million selling world-wide 1962 instrumental smash (Margaret Thatcher claims it's her favorite record of all time), stars Con O'Neill, who first played Meek in an acclaimed 2005 West End stage play; also on hand are Kevin Spacey (as Meek's possibly crooked financial manager) and Swinging London cinema icon Rita Tushingham as a psychic.

For those unfamiliar with Meek, suffice it to say (as I wrote last year) that he was both the first important independent record producer in England and the most consistent UK hitmaker before the advent of The Beatles. A genuine visionary, his records have a sound (based on canny use of primitive tape echo and early electronic instruments) as readily identifiable as those of his contemporary Phil Spector; the vast majority of them, however, were crafted in a hole-in-the-wall homemade studio on the floor above a leathergoods store on London's Holloway Road. An eccentric with an interest in UFOs and the occult (his unreleased for years 1960 solo album I Hear a New World was a bizarre concept record about Outer Space), Meek was also a flamboyant yet closeted gay man who committed suicide, ten years to the day after the death of his idol Buddy Holly, by blowing his brains out with a borrowed shotgun (but only after first murdering his landlady).

Here's the trailer, which should give you an idea of the film's nifty evocation of a genuinely exciting pop moment. (And what I wouldn't give for one of those band suits -- it really was the Golden of Age of Sharkskin, wasn't it?)

Telstar was very well received in England when it played this summer, and obviously Meek's life is a great story, which makes it all the more puzzling (and maddening) that there's no American release scheduled at the moment for either the film or a playable at home DVD. We'll keep you posted if that changes anytime in the future.

Meanwhile, if you've got a multi-region DVD machine, you can -- and definitely should -- order the Brit disc version over here.

Twitter Box Office Update

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:02:24 -0800

Total tweets for November 13th Openers

2012 had a strong Wednesday with 3,525 tweets, 23.08% more than its Tuesday total of 2,864. After having the fourth strongest Tuesday since September, it held its ground, taking 4th spot for Wednesday after this performance behind only Michael Jackson's This Is It (14,732), Paranormal Activity (9,291), and Where The Wild Things Are (4,710). This film has a much broader appeal than any of those three films though, and as such its ratio should also be way lower.

Based on how it has performed this week and its nice Wednesday jump it should be in line for about 15,000 tweets by end of day tomorrow. Expect a Friday ratio of 750 which means it should be in line for a $20 million Friday and a $54 million weekend.

Pirate Radio came back down to earth slightly with 627 tweets for Wednesday, an increase of 30.08% over Tuesday. Thursdays generally see a minimum of a 35% jump in tweet counts (average of 56% jump, 54% median), so with that in mind it looks like it will end up at around 2,300 tweets for the week. Expect a ratio similar to Amelia of 1,500 given its older appeal and slim theatre count. That would give it $1.5 million for Friday and about a $4 million weekend.

Please check back tomorrow when our official predictions will be updated.

Below is the full chart for my Twitter tracking history.

Strong Tuesday for ‘Christmas Carol’

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:15:27 -0800

Disney’s A Christmas Carol was up a strong 50 percent from Monday on Tuesday, as grosses were up significantly nearly across the board on the eve of the Veterans Day holiday. A Christmas Carol grossed $2.41 million for the day, bringing the film’s five-day total to $34.07 million. That places the Robert Zemeckis directed film starring Jim Carrey 11 percent ahead of the pace of 2004’s The Polar Express. That lead will spike back up some today thanks to Veterans Day, which is traditionally a very strong day for films aimed at family audiences, especially when it falls during the midweek.

Michael Jackson’s This Is It was up 39 percent from Monday to remain in second place with $1.36 million. However, the Sony release was down 49 percent from last Tuesday, which represented the day’s weakest Tuesday to Tuesday hold for holdovers currently in the top ten. This Is It has grossed $59.35 million through its first two weeks of release, placing it 35 percent ahead of 2004’s Ray at the same point in its run. This Is It will clear the $60 million mark today and is now just $5.93 million away from matching the final gross of last year’s Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus 3D.

The Men Who Stare at Goats held steady in third with $1.22 million. Overture’s war comedy starring George Clooney was up 33 percent from Monday, which represented one of the day’s weaker daily increases among wide releases. The five-day gross for The Men Who Stare at Goats stands at $14.84 million, as the film continues to run 20 percent ahead of the pace of Warner’s The Informant!

Universal’s The Fourth Kind was up 41 percent from Monday to finish in fourth with $1.09 million. The sci-fi horror film starring Milla Jovovich has performed towards the higher end of pre-release expectations so far with a five-day start of $14.09 million. The Fourth Kind will soon become Jovovich’s highest grossing non-Resident Evil film since 1997’s The Fifth Element.

Paranormal Activity rounded out the day’s unchanged top five with $0.75 million. Paramount’s low-budget horror blockbuster was up 43 percent from Monday and down a respectable 34 percent from last Tuesday. Paranormal Activity has grossed $98.37 million to date and will likely join the $100 million club on Thursday.

The Hits Keep Coming

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:29:23 -0800

I'm incredibly intrigued by The American, a new film from Anton Corbijn (Control) that stars George Clooney. Collider released the picture to the left today as well as a detailed synopsis. The first two sentences of said synopsis say enough:

"Jack (George Clooney) is an artful assassin with a lengthy track record, constantly on the move and always watching his back. When an assignment goes wrong and a lover ends up dead, he vows that the next job will be his last."

Ah yes, the infamous "last job." I'm sure that isn't going to turn out well...

Based on that synopsis, The American will almost certainly draw comparisons to Michael Mann's masterful Collateral. Those are some big shoes to fill, but I'd bet that Clooney and Co. are up to the task. Tom Cruise totally knocked his hitman role out of the park in Collateral, and I'm sure that Clooney will have just as much fun playing the bad guy for a change.

At this point, Clooney has earned my total trust and I'm sure not I'm not the only one. Even if the projects that he picks aren't always home runs, they never fail to be interesting on some level. With The Men Who Stare at Goats, Up in the Air and Fantastic Mr. Fox hitting theaters this fall, 2009 is certainly Clooney's year. As of this moment, he's definitely the favorite to win the Best Actor Oscar for Up in the Air.

The American hits theaters on September 28, 2010.

First Look at 'Kick-Ass'

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:21:22 -0800

Although it was not expected to be released until Friday, the teaser trailer for the upcoming Matthew Vaughn-directed adaptation of Mark Millar's comic Kick-Ass has arrived online.

The eagerly-anticipated movie stars Aaron Johnson as a teen who, despite an obvious lack of super powers, decides to become a real-life crimefighter, costume and all. The film also stars Nicholas Cage, Chloe Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Mark Strong and Xander Berkeley.

Millar also penned the comic series that turn into last year's blockbuster hit Wanted, which earned $339 million worldwide. Like Wanted, Kick-Ass is said to contain some serious violence, but the trailer suggests more comedy than anything else.

Kick-Ass is scheduled to hit theaters on April 16, 2010.

'Clash of the Titans' Teaser Lands Online

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:16:17 -0800

For the reimagining of Clash of the Titans, Warner Bros. and director Louis Leterrier (2008's The Incredible Hulk) have assembled an impressive cast. The film boasts appearances by Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Sam Worthington and Gemma Arterton.

Judging by the teaser, Leterrier certainly found inspiration in 300, the Warner Bros. release that became a huge sleeper hit in 2006 with a nearly $460 million worldwide haul.

Titans is set to hit theaters on March 26, 2010.

What's UP Doc: The Search For a Cleverer Headline

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:02:41 -0800

As a very wise man once said -- if memory serves, it was my old chum Glenn Kenny over at Some Came Running -- one's reaction to a new animated film from Pixar tends to be "ho hum, another masterpiece." Case in point: Disney's just released DVD and Blu-ray combo of the most recent Pixar feature, the hilarious and visually stunning UP. Which is to say that while its not as transcendently great as, say, WALL-E, it's so good on so many levels you almost take its brilliance for granted. You know what I mean -- just another day at the office for Pixar, right?

For those of you making your Christmas lists, I should add that Disney's new video package features the film on Blu-ray and DVD, plus a third platter of bonus features and a digital copy disc. I saw the DVD, which looks astounding; if my colleague Joe Galm, who reviewed the Blu-ray in these pages is right (and I'm sure he is) it plays even more remarkably in the newer format. I should add, however, that neither DVD or Blu-ray features the theatrically released 3D version, which was one of the most impressive things of its kind I've ever witnessed; one presumes that will be available for home consumption sometime down the line.

Anyway, here's a clip from Dug's Special Mission, the new animated short featuring the titular talking canine, and my favorite of the bonus features. Squirrel!!!!!

For the record, other bonuses include an informative if not scintillating running audio commentary by by director Pete Docter and co-director Bob Peterson, some de rigeur deleted scenes, and (on the Blu-ray) an in-depth look at the making of Lost and Star Trek composer Michael Giacchino's memorable orchestral score (for what it's worth, BTW, I think Giacchino's the most interesting guy in his field at the moment).

I should also add that star Ed Asner's voice work as the film's geriatric balloon salesman is priceless; clearly, this is the Grumpy Old Man role he was born to play, even if you never actually see him. Seriously -- if you're not being upstaged by cute Pixar animals like Dug, you must be doing something right.

The bottom line, of course, is that you can -- and frankly, with the holidays coming, er, up, you'd be some kind of a schween if you didn't -- order UP here.

Twitter Box Office Update

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:52:27 -0800

Total tweets for November 13th Openers

2012 managed to rake in 2,864 tweets on Tuesday for a decent 20.04% jump from Monday's 2,290. Again, it was behind Paranormal Activity (11,827), Michael Jackson's This Is It (7,689) and Where The Wild Things Are (4,363) for the biggest Tuesday tweet-tally. Of note though is that Paranormal had insane buzz and it had already been released for a few weeks before its Tuesday tally (the Tuesday counted was before its wide release on October 16th) and This Is It's Tuesday figure was its release day since it opened with 10PM shows on the 27th. Wild Things might be the best comparison for the film in terms of its trajectory of tweets for the week. That went up a similar 23.88% on Tuesday from Monday, and if 2012 follows its Wednesday and Thursday jumps we'll be looking at a 13,000 tweet week. Not nearly as impressive as I would have thought going into the week.

There were a number of very critical tweets again but the was a definite large increase in positive tweets, mostly from people anticipating the release as opposed to those who had seen it.

"is going to see 2012 tomorrow night, yay cant wait!!!!!"
"i wanna go see 2012 (: looks like a good movie."
"must watch 2012 movie ! this crazy movie !! Ronald Emmerich, u rock !!"
"im sooooooooooooooooo desperate to watch 2012!!"
"Wanna Watch 2012!!!!!!! soon soon!!!"

You get the idea. It definitely looks like its building momentum coming into Wednesday. Lets see how it plays out tomorrow.

Pirate Radio took off Tuesday and more than doubled its paltry Monday tally with 482 tweets. This jump marks a 54.98% increase, similar to Amelia's 50.87%. Now you might be wondering why the Amelia comparison, well that also was in sub-1,000 theatres, played to an older audience and provided an alternative on a weekend with no comparable draw. If it follows Amelia's daily changes it should end up with roughly 2,000 tweets for the week. Hardly a spectacular number, and as such it looks like it will have trouble hitting mid to upper single digits. Check back tomorrow for our official estimates and additional insight from Twitter,

Below is the full chart for my Twitter tracking history.

Glenn Beck's Family Holiday Tale The Christmas Sweater Returns to Movie Theaters Live from New York

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:44:07 -0800

Centennial, Colo. – Glenn Beck’s personal story of love, faith and family returns this holiday season with a new installment of The Christmas Sweater – A Return to Redemption, a live in-theater event presented exclusively in select movie theaters on Thursday, Dec. 3rd followed by a taped encore on Thursday, Dec. 10th. “The Christmas Sweater,” Beck’s popular stage show based on his best-selling book, will pick up where the story left off last Christmas and chronicle the life-changing impact it had on people all over the country, live from New York.

Tickets to The Christmas Sweater – A Return to Redemption on Dec. 3rd and 10th at 8:00 p.m. ET / 7:00 p.m. CT / 6:00 p.m. MT and 8:00 p.m. PT (tape delayed) are available here and presenting theater box offices. For a complete list of theater locations and prices, please visit the web site (theaters and participants are subject to change).

Presented by NCM Fathom and Mercury Radio Arts, The Christmas Sweater – A Return to Redemption reveals the real-life events that inspired Beck to write “The Christmas Sweater.” Beck will also share stories of the overwhelming response he received about how the tale’s message of redemption changed people’s lives during this live event broadcast from the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at New York University. Following the showing of this re-mastered and exclusive version of “The Christmas Sweater,” pre-recorded live during his 2008 tour, Beck will introduce several people who were touched by the story, taking audiences on an intimate journey of transformation through redemption. One of New York’s premiere choirs will open and close the evening with LIVE uplifting, holiday music.

"The Christmas Sweater - A Return to Redemption is a celebration of everything that makes the holiday season so meaningful and I am excited that NCM Fathom is going to help me share brand new stories of inspiration with audiences across the country," said Beck.

Based on a deeply personal true story and the New York Times best-seller, “The Christmas Sweater” is a narrative of a boy named Eddie who takes audiences on his tragic and painful road to manhood. It takes a battle with himself, his family and his faith to help Eddie fight through the storm to the realization he already had life’s most valuable treasures.

Glenn Beck’s The Christmas Sweater – A Return to Redemption will be shown in select movie theaters including AMC Entertainment Inc., Cinemark USA Inc., Cobb Theatres, Georgia Theatre Company, Goodrich Quality Theatres, Hollywood Theaters, Kerasotes Showplace Theatres, Malco Theatres, Marcus Theatres, National Amusements and Regal Entertainment Group movie theatres, as well as The Arlington Theatre (Santa Barbara, CA), Carolina Theatre (Asheville, NC), The Grand Theatre (Bismarck, ND), Palace Cinema 9 (South Burlington, VT), Penn Cinema (Lititz, PA) and State Theatre (State College, PA) through NCM’s exclusive Digital Broadcast Network – North America’s largest cinema broadcast network.

“Tens of thousands of fans celebrated the holiday season last year with Glenn Beck’s The Christmas Sweater and they won’t want to miss the continuation of this touching story,” said Dan Diamond, vice president of NCM Fathom. “This special movie theater event will inspire audiences of all ages this holiday season.”

Beck is one of America's leading radio and television personalities. His quick wit, candid opinions and engaging personality have made The Glenn Beck Program the third highest rated radio program in America and Glenn Beck, one of the most successful new shows on the Fox News Channel. His unique blend of modern-day storytelling and insightful views on current events allowed him to achieve the extraordinary feat of having No. 1 New York Times bestsellers in both fiction and non-fiction. Beck is also the star of a live stage show, the publisher of Fusion magazine and the editor of GlennBeck.com.

Four Seasons Lodge

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:08:46 -0800

You can’t do survivors guilt soft. But watching the afflicted cry buckets when recounting one of humanity’s unpardonable atrocities isn’t going to keep a broad audience, either. New York Times reporter-cum-filmmaker Andrew Jacobs dealt with this dilemma straight on by quickly cozying his subjects to cameras (with a little help from documentary legend Albert Maysles) and allowing their day-to-day workings to move forward unhindered. The storied denizens of Four Seasons Lodge wax agony while tickling funny bones: this community of elderly Catskill visitors never drown in misery, but instead live out their days with fervor. This robust doc should command extended runs because auds will waltz with these 80-years-young wassailers who soar in their second chance at life.

Andrew Jacobs went to file a story for his broadsheet and fell into filming a feature. He lucked onto one of the last aging colonies in New York’s Catskills that was still sunsetting after other members had regrettably sold off their shares of the rolling hills. Many sour sellers want to hire a lawyer and wrest the remaining property back. Will the commune of co-owners call The Four Seasons Lodge home again? Or will this be the grand finale: a last chance to kick-up the heels and taste the gravlax?

The characters in the documentary play card games and dance the foxtrot but when they ante up or reach for a swig of Manischewitz the blue ink tattooed on their forearms unsleeves a serial numbered past. See, each Four Season’s Lodge resident did time in a concentration camp. All lost family and friends during the Holocaust. Once immigrated to the States they glommed onto each other and started a new family. A charismatic Lodger quips, “We are survivors and we stick together. We need that.”

The presence of death is in the air. Every frame. Whose funeral will be next? And then there’s the fate of the lodge itself. The collective favors a blitzkrieg to reclaim the property and pass it down to their children. They made this rustic sanctuary home and why should they just up and leave because a real estate baron is big bargain shopping?

Jacobs, as a jouno and new filmmaker, must have pursued the idea of shooting his subjects as a sort of companion to a series in print. But what became of the assignment was the remarkable closing of distance with these soulful characters. They open-up like Chinese takeout cartons. Jacobs provides an atmosphere for these tight-lipped elders to share intimate tales of their lives as well as partake in a little levity. They may be dolled up for dinner and dancing at the dining hall, or otherwise counting breaths, looking pasty white in a hospital bed. The tone is sweet and other times tart when there’s cause. The drama’s real but broken-up by quirkiness. When a key fails lodge president Carl squeezes his girth through a tenant’s window and opens the front door from the inside.

The threads of each person and friendships and romances that spun out of tragedy are not given token treatment. Rather, they’re purposefully drawn out. The wick on these stories may be slowly burning away. Oral histories have a beginning and an end, after all. The collective’s flame burns bright and disrupts the darkness of a time that too many would soon rather forget. Luckily, we still care to remember.

Distributor: First Run Features
Director/Screenwriter: Andrew Jacobs
Producers: Matthew Lavine
Genre: Documentary
Rating: Unrated
Running time: 97 min.
Release date: November 11 NY

‘A Christmas Carol’ #1 on Monday

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:56:09 -0800

Disney’s A Christmas Carol led Monday’s box office with $1.61 million. The motion capture film directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Jim Carrey was down 80 percent from Sunday. That was nearly on par with the 82 percent daily slide The Polar Express experienced on its first Monday back in November of 2004. A Christmas Carol has grossed $31.66 million through its first four days, placing it 33 percent ahead of the pace of Polar Express (without adjusting for ticket price inflation). However, grosses for A Christmas Carol have been softer than expected thus far and given the film’s enormous production budget in the area of $190 million, it will need to hold up very well throughout the holiday season. Fortunately for the film, November’s release schedule has little else to offer for those in the mood for a holiday themed film.

Michael Jackson’s This Is It remained in second place with $0.98 million. Sony’s well received concert documentary was down 72 percent from Sunday, but down a sharp 60 percent from last Monday. After a slower than expected start, This Is It has exhibited very solid holding power thus far, but the decrease from last Monday could mean that larger decreases are in store for much of this week. This Is It has grossed $57.99 million in 13 days and will likely cross the $60 million mark on the upcoming Veterans Day holiday this Wednesday.

Overture’s The Men Who Stare at Goats held in third place with $0.92 million. The war comedy starring George Clooney was down 67 percent from Sunday and is performing in line with pre-release expectations so far. The four-day gross for The Men Who Stare at Goats stands at $13.62 million, placing it 20 percent ahead of the $11.33 million four-day start of Warner’s The Informant!

Universal’s The Fourth Kind continued to lead both Paramount’s Paranormal Activity and Warner’s The Box in the battle of horror-thrillers. The PG-13 film starring Milla Jovovich grossed $0.77 million on Monday, which was down 69 percent from Sunday and brings the film’s four-day cume to $13.00 million. Paranormal Activity grossed $0.52 million, which was down 70 percent from Sunday and down 56 percent from last Monday, as the low-budget blockbuster continues to fall off quickly in the days after Halloween. The Box, like The Fourth Kind, was also down 69 percent from Sunday. The Richard Kelly directed film starring Cameron Diaz has grossed an underwhelming $8.05 million in four days.

Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire continued its terrific start in platform release. Lionsgate’s low-budget Oscar hopeful for Best Picture grossed $0.23 million, which was down just 60 percent from Sunday and was good enough for tenth place for the day. Breaking into the daily top ten is an amazing accomplishment given that the film is currently playing in only 18 locations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta. Precious has grossed $2.11 million in four days and will expand into additional markets on Friday.

Emmerich's Next Film

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:06:35 -0800

In honor of the impending release of 2012, I'm going to take a page from The Onion and do a fake news blurb:

ROLAND EMMERICH ANNOUNCES NEW PROJECT

After wreaking havoc on the world in Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012, Roland Emmerich has decided to take it easy for a while. The director's next project represents a drastic change of pace:

Set far away from the bustling cities of New York and Los Angeles, The Builder focuses on a man who decides to construct a new home for his family on an inherited piece of land. The weather is perfect, and no animals or giant monsters attack the man's family.

Emmerich plans to shoot the film without special effects. The score will consist of spare and haunting melodies composed on the piano.

"I've destroyed everything in the world in my movies. I think it's time to find pleasure in the process of building," said Emmerich.

Pirate Radio

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:15:52 -0800

This blast of Sixties nostalgia, derived from the days when pirate radio ships broadcast off the coast of Britain with a motley crew of dee-jays, should appeal to ageing music freaks and fans of Brit-pop. It doesn’t have the same broad appeal, however, of writer/director Richard Curtis’s previous winners Love Actually or Four Weddings and a Funeral (the latter of which he wrote). Expect distinctly lesser returns and more limited resonance.

Although it is more likely to create a bit of a box office storm on its home turf, the second directorial outing for Richard Curtis, Pirate Radio, may make heavy weather of its voyage across the Pond, where audiences do not have the same historical perspective and nostalgia for the era of pirate radio ships. In the ’60s, the seas around Britain were awash with these bobbing hulks full of assorted dee-jays who, operating outside territorial waters, gave listeners a blast of pop music while the staid and Government controlled British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) basically turned their heads.

The rusting fishing trawler Radio Rock is based on the legendary Radio Caroline, which pumped out pop around the clock in an atmosphere of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll.

Among the bunch are Philip Seymour Hoffman as an American whose language turned the airwaves blue, Rhys Ifans oozing disheveled cool, Chris O’Dowd as a loquacious Irishman, Tom Brooke as a challenged space cadet and Bill Nighy lording over them all as the Captain. Mix in the likes of Kenneth Branagh as a Government minister trying to curb their antics and Emma Thompson as the mom of a young aspiring vinyl spinner (Tom Sturridge) and the foundations are there for some ensemble sparks.

The trouble is that sparks are all you get. Curtis, whose roots were in sketch writing, fails to provide the film with a strong narrative. Most of the humor stems from one-off situations rather than an inherently robust story, all of which makes for a bumpy sail.

The sense of the period and Sixties style is immaculately recreated as the action shifts between ship and shore where millions of youngsters tuned in to the outlawed band of renegades, many of whom later progressed to become legitimate household names on the national broadcaster and helped to shape the network as it exists today.

The inclusion of Hoffman may lend some Stateside appeal alongside Curtis’s reputation as an astute creator of a string of box office hits. Just don’t expect it to make too many waves. And be prepared, for at 129 minutes it overstays its welcome.

Distributor: Focus
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Brooke, Rhys Darby, Will Adamsdale, Katherine Parkinson, Emma Thompson and January Jones.
Director/Screenwriter: Richard Curtis
Producers: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Richard Curtis and Hilary Bevan Jones
Genre: Comedy
Rating: R for language, and some sexual content including brief nudity.
Running time: 129 min
Release date: November 13, 2009

Previously posted: June 19, 2009

2012

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:20:14 -0800

Apparently determined to end his career with a bang as the ‘disaster film’ director of record, Roland Emmerich has thrown everything imaginable at the screen in this mother (nature) of all destruction flicks. With the world about to implode, a select group of people are determined to survive and preserve the human race in this impossibly ludicrous guilty pleasure. Silliness aside, 2012 will undoubtedly be a worldwide box office smash, luring any moviegoer willing (and able) to turn off his brain and go along for the 158 minute thrill ride.

Emmerich, the force behind other end-of-life-as-we-know-it epics like Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and even good ‘ol Godzilla (1998) has outdone himself with this global disaster tale that blames the world’s impending end on natural causes. A series of non-man made calamities befall the planet starting with earthquakes in California and worse as a growing tsunami makes its way to China, taking out everything and everyone in its path. Emmerich and his co-writer Harald Kloser are smart enough to know sheer chaos would not cut it without compelling human characters to root for … and then watch die. Central to the plot is loser author Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) whose brilliant novel led to the breakup of his marriage to his wife Kate (Amanda Peet) who, consequently, has recently taken up with another guy named Gordon (Tom McCarthy). Still the ever-protective Dad, Cusack heeds warnings from nutcase Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson) and gathers up the family just as the apocalypse begins its deadly march. Meanwhile U.S. President Wilson (Danny Glover), aware for a few years that all this was coming, presides over a plan to create a Nemo-like Nautilus contraption that key government officials from around the world will use to ride out the storm. Harrelson is somehow privy to information of the exact whereabouts of this race-saver and has maps to help Cusack and company find it.

With over-the-top car chases, plane chases and every other kind of chase, this CGI wetdream of a movie keeps the special effects houses in business as every significant monument from the White House (why is Emmerich determined to gut this place in film after film?) to Rio de Janiero, to the Vatican goes down, down, down. With some witty touches (a takeoff on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is a hoot) and lots of unintentionally funny dialogue, 2012 (which gets its inspiration from the Mayan calendar predicting major “changes” in that year) somehow manages to keep us riveted for over two and a half mind-boggling hours.

Although the true stars here are the visual effects wizards, Cusack cashes in whatever indie-cred he’s had in the past to sock this dumb stuff home. Amanda Peet is very good at looking worried/terrified while McCarthy as her boyfriend comes in handy as an ace pilot after just two short lessons. Glover is stoic as the President while Chiwetel Ejiofor is just too damn earnest as his all-knowing science advisor. For that matter so is Thandie Newton, as the President’s humorless daughter. Harrelson is a riot as a low-rent radio host and would-be prophet who foresees the world’s end and Oliver Platt steals every scene he’s in as the highly manipulative Chief Of Staff.

Theater owners need not worry as Sony’s holiday destruction derby is anything but a disaster and should fill their coffers all season long.

Distributor: Columbia
Cast: John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Woody Harrelson, Danny Glover, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Thandie Newton.
Director: Roland Emmerich
Screenwriters: Roland Emmerich and Harald Kloser
Producers: Roland Emmerich, Larry J. Franco and Harald Kloser
Genre: Action Adventure
Rating: PG-13 for intense disaster sequences and some language.
Running time: 158 min.
Release date: November 13, 2009

'Spider-Man 4' Courting a Big-Name Actress?

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:53:23 -0800

Source: Mania, ComingSoon

Online rumors are suggesting that director Sam Raimi wants Sherlock Holmes star Rachel McAdams to play The Black Cat in the upcoming Spider-Man 4, for which stars Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst are slated to return.

Possible corroboration for the rumor comes from Atonement actress Romola Garai, who has a column in the UK newspaper The Observer, noted that she "put herself on tape" for a Spider-Man 4 role, although she did not specify which one. In the comic books, the character is a cat burglar looking to free her dying father from prison, who meets and becomes romantically obsessed with Spider-Man.

After a string of successes starting with 2005's Wedding Crashers, the actress took a break in 2006 and only made one movie in 2007 and 2008, finally returning to the big screen in full force this year in State of Play, The Time Traveler's Wife and the aforementioned Sherlock Holmes. The Guy Ritchie-directed action comedy stars Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, and opens on Christmas Day.

De France Boards 'Hereafter'

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:29:12 -0800

Source: Variety

French actress Cecile De France has joined the cast of Clint Eastwood's Hereafter, which will star Matt Damon. Filming began last month, for a planned December 2010 release.

The actress, whose resume includes High Tension and Russian Dolls, is an interesting choice for a big Eastwood film, though Eastwood has recently shown a liking for unknowns (or at least unknowns in America) in supporting roles, as in his self-starrer Gran Torino.

Eastwood and Damon will also be teaming up for Invictus, which opens on December 11.

Aniston, Cooper and Galifianakis Set For 'Here'

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:28:09 -0800

Source: Variety

Stars Jennifer Aniston, Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis are slated to headline You Are Here, a romantic comedy written by Mad Men creator/executive producer Matthew Weiner that will mark his feature directorial debut.

Weiner originally wrote You Are Here while working on The Sopranos as a writer and producer. The film was scheduled to be shot during a hiatus from Mad Men, but work on the popular AMC show has pushed the film's shooting schedule back until 2011. The three leads are juggling their schedules to make sure the project fits in. No plot details have been revealed.

Earlier this year, Aniston and Cooper both appeared in the romantic comedy He's Just Not That Into You, before Cooper and Galifianakis hit it big co-starring in the surprise summer comedy smash The Hangover. Aniston went on to star in Management with Steve Zahn, while Cooper played the title role in the Sandra Bullock romantic comedy All About Steve and is busy shooting the big-screen adaptation of The A-Team, starring Liam Neeson and District 9's Sharlto Copley. Galifianakis, meanwhile, has been lining up projects left and right, committing to Todd Philips' Due Date with Robert Downey, Jr. and Jamie Foxx, the Shrek spin-off Puss-in-Boots, Jay Roach's remake Dinner For Schmucks and Once writer/director John Carney's dramedy Town House with Amy Adams, all while co-starring in HBO's new mystery comedy Bored to Death.

The Science of '2012'

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:01:22 -0800

Like it or not, Roland Emmerich is the Irwin Allen of our age.

The director is a one-man disaster crew, like Allen was during the ‘70s with films like The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure.

Emmerich destroysentire cities (Godzilla), beloved landmarks (The White House in Independence Day) and huge swaths of the United States (The Day After Tomorrow).

He nearly exploded his own Midas touch with the 2008 clunker 10,000 B.C.

His latest film, 2012, finds Emmerich piggy backing on the Mayan prophecy of the world coming to an end in three short years. But is the new master of disaster simply creating more Hollywood fiction, or is there a kernel—or two—of truth behind his cinematic doom and gloom?

Robert Stencel, professor of astronomy at the University of Denver, says Mayanist scholars insist the doomsday prediction is a misinterpretation of the Mayan calendar. That hasn’t stopped pop culture from referencing December 21, 2012 as a harbinger of disaster.

The film says a freak alignment of planets, which occurs every 640,000 years, is the spark which sets the doomsday flame alight.

“The frequency of planetary alignment happens a lot more frequently,“ Stencel says.

And the solar flares which cause so much havoc in the film aren’t a particular concern today. Such flares would have to be spectacular in nature to have such an impact on the earth, and that kind of behavior is more typically associated with younger stars.

“It’s a function of magnetic activity. Younger stars spin faster and generate stronger magnetic fields,” he says. Our sun “went through that teenager phase a long time ago,” he says, “and there’s nothing to indicate it’s heading in that direction. The sun is a boring, middle aged star in comparison with millions of other known stars in our part of the galaxy.”

“It is far more likely the Sun will swallow the earth toward the end of the sun's evolutionary life, some four to five billion years from now,” he says.

The Mayans’ prediction regarding the end of the world happening in 2012 has no real scientific truth behind it, but Stencel says the ancient people did have the foresight to build their calendar based on actual planetary cycles because they were skilled observers.

The Mayan calendar rolls over in December 2012, but he pegs that date to another overhyped phenomenon—the Y2K scare nine years ago.

“It didn’t end the world. We seemed to have survived it,” he says.

The interpretations of Mayan prophecy come down to the difference between
astronomy and astrology. The former deals with data and facts, while the latter involves anthropomorphizing those facts, that is, trying to make sense of how nature controls daily human events.

No matter what happens to 2012 with critics or ticket buyers, the themes presented in the film represent a chance for audiences to do a little historical fact checking.

“We see these situations as teachable moments,” he says of the film. “What is it really about? What is the actual information? What are the boundaries to interpreting this stuff?”

'Squeakquel' Moves to Dec. 23

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:54:53 -0800

Source: Variety

The sequel—er, "squeakquel" to 2007's Alvin and the Chipmunks is pushing its release forward two days, from December 25 to Wednesday, December 23. Getting a head-start on the Christmas box office circus, the family comedy will try and capitalize on all the out-of-school kids with nothing but free time, and has the distinct asset of being the only family comedy in the game at that time.

Regardless of the date change, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel should do enormously well, particularly if the first film's $358 million worldwide haul is any indication. The film will have practically no competition when families want to see a children's movie on Christmas day, as the only other blockbusters released around that timeframe will be more adult-oriented, like Avatar, Sherlock Holmes and It's Complicated. Oscar contenders Up In the Air and Nine will begin their wide runs on Christmas Day as well.

Alvin will be the only film released on December 23.

Ryder May Dance with 'Black Swan'

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:05:31 -0800

Source: Variety

Winona Ryder is reportedly in talks to join the cast of Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky's new thriller. Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis are already on board, and the project will be distributed by Fox Searchlight.

Ryder turned up recently with small parts in The Informers and Star Trek. The actress could be ready for comeback, and if anybody can help an aging thesp regain some stardom it would be Aronofsky. After playing the title role in Aronofsky's The Wrestler last year, Mickey Rourke has experienced a huge boost.

Christmas Comes But Once a Year (A Recurring Series): The Bird is the Word

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:01:26 -0800

Okay, I'll stipulate it's getting closer to Thanksgiving, and that
flogging Xmas gift giving is thus slightly more defensible than it was last week. On the other hand, as I am wont to mention these days, the economy is still (in Raymond Chandler's immortal phrase) trying to crawl under a duck (and no, the long awaited stimulus package in my pants has yet to arrive).

Still, the ineluctable fact is we're all going to have to buy presents this holiday season no matter what our straitened circumstances. And that being the case, I'd be remiss at this point if I didn't mention that if you've got a little disposable income you really ought to check out Warner Home Video's March of the Penguins Limited Edition Gift Set.

What do you get for your hard-earned kale? For starters, a beautiful transfer of the Oscar-winning 2005 documentary that started it all, the aforementioned March of the Penguins, narrated in comfortably avuncular tones by the wonderful Morgan Freeman, and starring an all-penguin cast. This is a flick that never fails to bring a tear to my eye. Watching it, I can't help but recall a great New Yorker cartoon from the early 90s; a bunch of bears are walking out of a movie theater, whose marquee announces that they've been seeing a film called The Salmon, and one of them says "I never knew they had feelings, too."

You also get a brand new and endlessly watchable followup doc, On the Wings of Penguins, which follows the alternately heart-warming and amusing travails of the warm-weather African species. And as bonuses, there are eight beautiful color penguin postcards -- mail them to your friends to keep them cognizant of a certain avian nomenclature -- and an absolutely adorable three-inch penguin plush toy. I'm holding mine as I type this with my other hand, and I must say, it's giving me a real feeling of emotional security.

Bottom line: A great package, and a gift in totally good taste. You can order it here. As they used to say at Mad magazine -- $35.99. Cheap.

Twitter Box Office Update

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:40:37 -0800

Total tweets for November 13th Openers

2012 had a very solid Monday performance with 2,290 tweets. Only Paranormal Activity (15,321), Where The Wild Things Are (3.312) and Michael Jackson's This Is It (2,913) have had bigger Mondays. The buzz again was not very positive for the large part, below are a few examples:

"This 2012 movie looks like the worst Arthur C. Clarke adaptation ever."
"Judging from the trailer, 2012 looks to be one of the worst movies ever made."
Am I the only one that thinks the movie 2012 looks like it could be really, really, really.....horrible?"

It is definitely up there with the most panned films of the last few months pre-release. The only real challenger to this that comes to mind is Jennifer's Body. This should drive up its ratio somewhat, perhaps into the high hundreds or even approaching 1,000 for its Friday box office. Based on this Monday number we should see a 13,000 - 14,000 tweet week.

Pirate Radio had a pretty minuscule Monday by comparison, with only 217 tweets, second fewest after Love Happens' 177. The comedy is targeting older audiences and should be in store for a pretty big ratio of 1,000+. The buzz volume simply isn't there for this to break out it seems. Based on this Monday number we should see a 1,500 - 2,000 tweet week.

Below is the full chart for my Twitter tracking history.

UP (Blu-ray)

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:05:29 -0800

A film drenched in lively sentiment and dreamlike lucidity, Pixar’s UP is a departure from the studio’s usual anthropomorphic tendencies, instead relying on human concerns to express tribute to cinema and flesh-out, among other things, generational gaps. The now familiar image of protagonist Carl Frederickson’s house floating amiably above the world—suspended by the very balloons he made his living by selling—is oddly quaint in its expansiveness. The ornately colored home is merely a dancing blip on an otherwise cloudy blue sky—the juxtaposition of which looks too serene to be called anything but cinema. UP relishes in moments such as this and channels them towards establishing a link between film, past and present. Technologically-based compositions and a pastiche of classic Hollywood storytelling work together to exercise Pixar’s point—one that was not lost on audiences. UP went on to gross $292.9 million throughout its domestic run, peaking at 3,832 screens nationwide.

Before Carl’s upward voyage, the film introduces us to him as a boy. Sitting in a movie theater, enthralled by what’s onscreen—namely Charles “explorer extraordinaire” Muntz— Carl becomes obsessed with the nature of adventure; an obsession that came to be thanks to movies. He lets the cinematic overtake his young life and establishes a meaningful connection with fellow explorer-in-training Ellie, his future wife. The entirety of their relationship is summed up in a montage that makes more than a few allusions to silent-era practices. Though playful and darling, the emotional weight of this silent-film-within-a-film is heavy. Human joy and tragedy is expressed here in ways worthy of Chaplin. Carl’s loss of Ellie becomes synonymous with his loss of daring.

Now only able to amble about his abode, Carl closes himself off to the outside world and refuses to give in the pressures of progression. A nameless, expressionless, wordless business man heads a building project that is in need of the widower’s house, which now symbolizes the wife he misses and the youth-like innocence the two carried into old age. After being declared a “public nuisance” and forced to surrender his property, the elderly Carl plans his escape. And escape he does.

As Carl’s home lifts off the ground—straining wood and snapping pipes—it caroms off a van and heads skyward, smashing a television antenna as it climbs. Though innocuous by design, these “accidents” further the notion of Carl’s refusal of the inevitable and act as a theoretical “screw you” to society and TV alike. When he breaches the cloud-lined sky, he is really transcending reality and entering the world of the cinematic. In this, disbelief is asked to be suspended. What follows is a hodgepodge of classic film motif, laudation, and reference that work in harmony to forge UP’s fancy-free narrative. Carl and stowaway-cum-sidekick Russell—a preteen Wilderness Explorer of Asian descent—fly to the heart of South America where there’s adventure abound. These adventures take on the form of heart-stopping getaways, in flight combat and old fashion villainy. Throughout it all, the duo try to understand each other, just as the film tries to develop an understanding between the technical capabilities of film today and the larger-than-life projections of yesteryear.

Though emotionally and visually potent, UP is not without its issues, some of which come as the result of trying to please adults and children alike. The plot can become tangential and sometimes too silly for its own good—making the aforementioned suspension of disbelief a bit much to ask. Rather than comment on the current state of the medium, UP sets its bearings to Adventure and moves ahead full-bore. What results is an experience only film could duplicate, but the movie seems too enamored in this idea and, in so being, eschews some rather meaty topics. Timely paternal issues arise and are dealt with in well-minded, progressive ways but the film lacks a feminine pulse. While Ellie remains important to Carl’s drive, the female impact is primarily gauged through remembrance and symbolism and not actual involvement. Side characters are playful—namely a talking retriever named Dug—but not particularly memorable; which is odd, as secondary players are a strength in most Pixar offerings. Nonetheless, UP is another gem in the studio’s crown and one of the better offerings from this year. The levels on which it can be enjoyed—poignant, experiential, intellectual—elevate UP above most examples of contemporary cinema and even some of its own beloved classics.

Transfer

The aesthetic of the film is something new to Pixar and lies somewhere between the earthy warmth of Ratatouille and the contrasting vibrancy of WALL-E. Having had the pleasure of seeing it in theaters, I can say that Disney's Blu-ray treatment of UP not only aptly represents the vision of co-directors Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, but also the capabilities of BD technology. The image is uniformly bright and the high-def transfer brings out the ever-expressive details of Carl and company. Backgrounds are well-textured and offer a great sense of space, which is as apparent on home theaters as it is on commercial ones. As per the Pixar norm, humans are given more skewed features than the surroundings they occupy, but without sacrificing a crisp relation between character and environment. Michael Giacchino's bubbly score and other audio considerations are well-represented, though not as emphatically as I expected. Nuances in sound are delicate and dreamy, as if to match the film's nostalgic essence. Disney has put out a product that matches the high-standards of the film itself; the Blu-ray treatment is as definitive as possible and marks cinema as something to behold.

Distributor: Walt Disney
Cast: Edward Asner, Christopher Plummer, Delroy Lindo and Bob Peterson
Directors: Pete Docter and Bob Peterson
Screenwriter: Bob Peterson
Producer: Jonas Rivera
Genre: Action/Comedy/CG Animation
Rating: PG for some peril and action.
Running time: 96 min